Every week, Francis Fernandes, co-founder of Xpert Property Management Services Pvt Ltd., a facility management agency, trains his 14-member staff, employed at a private hospital in Andheri, in hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, social distancing and use of appropriate personal protective equipment. Along with this, he ensures that they remember to toss all items contaminated with blood or body fluids of COVID-19 patients in yellow coloured, non-chlorinated plastic bags. "They are not supposed to pick up contaminated items with their hands, even if they have gloves on. There's a special holder allocated to lift items used by a COVID-19 patient," he says.

The Coronavirus pandemic has thrown up multiple new challenges, and the monumental increase in biomedical waste is a major one among them. Apart from deploying their own municipal staff, several states have now started outsourcing the job of collection and disposal of COVID-19 biowaste to third parties, in order to meet the increasing load.