An Omics-Based Approach for Managing the Risk of COVID-19-Generated Wastes

Omics approaches have delivered significant achievement and have endorsed astonishing accomplishments in various aspects of life sciences research. Covid-19 has swept around the whole planet in the past two years and the extent of infection expanded is irreparable. These viral contaminants have affected the health of the environment of the planet by posing a threat to public health. This led to the production of enormous quantities of emerging and highly virulent waste products which had little waste management system. Biomedical products such as single-use face masks, PPE kits, syringes, sanitizer bottles, and latex gloves are discarded regularly in surplus amounts around the globe. The average waste production through COVID pollution is near about 2 million tonnes per day. The range of noxious materials in the environment keeps on multiplying every day in addition to these new pandemic wastes. Post-pandemic waste management has become extremely important due to the inclusion of both plastic and biomedical wastes from Covid-19 accoutrements. As they pose a huge risk to the well-being of public health and irreversible environmental contamination, degradation or remediation of these solid wastes is necessary. So, their identification and distribution are the need of the hour for response assessment and management of Covid generated waste products. The omics approach is a new, fast and robust technology in the field of bioinformatics including meta-genomics, multi-omics, meta-proteomics, meta-transcriptomics, and metabolomics. Due to the multi-OMICS approach, the genomic understandings aided in designing treatments and controlling the pandemic within the span of two years. Omics provide a wide range of utilities from reducing waste generation to effective degradation of biomedical plastic wastes and controlling the spread of viruses through immunization. This chapter emphasizes the significant aftermaths of omics-based, approaches, advances, restrictions, and challenges, in omics technologies related to Covid-19-generated waste treatment.