Pattaya’s infectious waste continues to accumulate

Pattaya is facing a new problem besides its growing number of Covid cases. The city by the Gulf of Thailand is amassing a vast amount of infectious waste, which has increased the garbage disposal problems the city is encountering.

Manoj Nongyai, the deputy mayor who also oversees the city’s environment office, said today that prior to the Covid pandemic, Pattaya dealt with about 800 kilograms of infectious waste every day. Now, the city has 7 to 8 tonnes of infectious waste per day. The waste comes from hospitals, hospitels, and community isolation centres.

There is so much waste in Patatay that the company that holds the contract for garbage collection is unable to handle the surplus of waste material. To fix the issue, the company has been told to put more trucks on the streets. Pattaya’s city administration has trained workers to help the garbage collecting company. The waste must be destroyed in 7 days. It was not immediately clear if the employees were being trained on how to handle infectious waste or how to throw out garbage.

Covid cases continue to climb in Pattaya so more hospitels have been opened to handle the patients, which resulted in more infectious waste being produced. The deputy mayor suggests hospital and community isolation centres put their infectious waste in red bags to make them easier to sort. Previously, Pattaya handled waste that was gushing into the ocean by jamming sandbags into ocean outlets.