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The recent emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the drastic production and use of healthcare and personal protective equipment, leading to the release of a huge quantity of hazardous medical and solid wastes in the environment. Meanwhile, these solid wastes may contribute to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 viral particles when disposed of without proper treatment and care. Since SARS-CoV-2 could persist on different material surfaces including plastic, steel, paper, cardboard, cloth, and wood, proper management of these hazardous solid wastes has become a challenging task during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, an overview of the consumption of COVID-19-related healthcare and personal protective equipment along with the production of hazardous solid waste is presented. The efficient management of these wastes is necessary to prevent the entering of SARS-CoV-2 in various environmental compartments. Therefore, some preventive measures including the use of biodegradable materials for manufacturing personal protective equipment, minimizing the use of non-biodegradable materials, efficient pre- and-post planning, careful segregation, and disposal are, therefore, proposed for their sustainable management. The findings reported in this paper contribute to tackling the problems associated with hazardous solid waste management, particularly for low- and middle-income countries.

The recent spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SAR-CoV-2) and the accompanied coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has continued ceaselessly despite the implementations of popular measures, which include social distancing and outdoor face masking as recommended by the World Health Organization. Due to the unstable nature of the virus, leading to the emergence of new variants that are claimed to be more and rapidly transmissible, there is a need for further consideration of the alternative potential pathways of the virus transmissions to provide the needed and effective control measures. This review aims to address this important issue by examining the transmission pathways of SARS-CoV-2 via indirect contacts such as fomites and aerosols, extending to water, food, and other environmental compartments. This is essentially required to shed more light regarding the speculation of the virus spread through these media as the available information regarding this is fragmented in the literature. The existing state of the information on the presence and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in water-food-environmental compartments is essential for cause-and-effect relationships of human interactions and environmental samples to safeguard the possible transmission and associated risks through these media. Furthermore, the integration of effective remedial measures previously used to tackle the viral outbreaks and pandemics, and the development of new sustainable measures targeting at monitoring and curbing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 were emphasized. This study concluded that alternative transmission pathways via human interactions with environmental samples should not be ignored due to the evolving of more infectious and transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants., Graphical abstract Image 1

The world is inundated by the global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has resulted in millions of reported cases and loss of many lives since December 2019, when the first case was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The presence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a virus causing COVID-19, has been confirmed in both the urine and feces of the infected people. In contrast, only the ribonucleic acid of the virus have been continuously isolated in wastewater. Currently, there is limited information on the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 and its infectivity in the wastewater environment; still, fecal-oral contamination and transmission cannot be ruled out yet. Early detection of the virus would have far-reaching benefits in curbing the spread of COVID-19 by employing effective tools like wastewater-based epidemiology to monitor hospital sewage and community wastewater in determining the prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 within the population. Moreover, there is a need to provide sustainable remedial approaches that can be employed to inactivate the virus in wastewater, and protective measures for the personnel and wastewater treatment workers against viral infections to forestall future pandemics and waterborne diseases. This study critically reviewed the knowledge gap focusing on the presence, detection, and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and biosolids. Furthermore, the sustainable remedial measures to address SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater environment are proposed and discussed. This study provides new and useful insights into the presence, detection, and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater environments, while proposing sustainable remedial approaches to preventing the COVID-19 transmission through this medium.

Water is an essential resource required for various human activities such as drinking, cooking, and other recreational activities. While developed nations have made significant improvement in providing adequate quality water and sanitation devoid of virus contaminations to a significant percentage of the residences, many of the developing countries are still lacking in these regards, leading to many death cases among the vulnerable due to ingestion of virus-contaminated water and other waterborne pathogens. However, the recent global pandemic of COVID-19 seems to have changed the paradigm by reawakening the importance of water quality and sanitation, and focusing more attention on the pervasive effect of the use of virus-contaminated water as it can be a potential driver for the spread of the virus and other waterborne diseases, especially in developing nations that are characterized by low socioeconomic development. Therefore, this review assessed the socioeconomic inequalities related to the usage of virus-contaminated water and other waterborne pathogens in developing countries. The socioeconomic factors attributed to the various waterborne diseases due to the use of virus-contaminated water in many developing countries are poverty, the standard of living, access to health care facilities, age, gender, and level of education. Some mitigation strategies to address the viral contamination of water sources are therefore proposed, while future scope and recommendations on tackling the essential issues related to socioeconomic inequality in developing nations are highlighted., Graphical abstract Image 1, Highlights • Socioeconomic inequality based on virus-contaminated water usage in developing countries is reviewed. • Developing countries show high socioeconomic inequality as compared to those of developed countries. • The use of virus-contaminated water may cause waterborne diseases which are attributed to various socioeconomic factors. • The mitigation strategies to address the viral contamination of water sources are proposed.

In this communication, we proposed sustainable preventive measures that may be adopted by the low-income countries to forestall the potential outbreak and transmission of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) through wastewater. Most low-income countries have poor sanitation and wastewater management policies, which create potential risks of COVID 19 spread. Hence, the proposed measures include decentralization of wastewater treatment facilities, community-wide monitoring and testing of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples, improved sanitation, developing point-of-use devices for wastewater decontamination, and more focused policy interventions. Therefore, this paper adds useful insights into the monitoring and management of ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in low-income countries., Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image, Highlights • The potential risks of COVID-19 in wastewater are highlighted. • Wastewaters from hospitals, quarantine centers, etc. dedicated to COVID-19 treatments may contain SARS-CoV-2 RNA particles. • Preventive measures to tackle the potential risks of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in wastewater are proposed. • Chlorination, ozonation, and UV radiations are useful in SARS-CoV-2 deactivation in water.