Environmental management strategy in response to COVID-19 in China: Based on text mining of government open information

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic and a major health emergency. In the process of fighting against COVID-19, the China Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) responded quickly and set up a working group as soon as possible. This article uses text mining to retrospectively analyze the government's public information on the website of MEE during the epidemic, sort out the timeline of MEE's response to COVID-19. We find that MEE's work during the COVID-19 pandemic is focused on medical waste and wastewater treatment, environment emergency monitoring, pollution prevention, and other environmental management for supporting economic recovery. It drafted three main medical waste management plans, an emergency environmental monitoring plan, and formulated "two lists" - a Positive checklist for Environmental impact assessment (EIA) approval and a positive checklist for supervision and enforcement, to promote the resumption of work and production. 2020 is the final year of China's "three years of fighting pollution prevention and control". In the case of the sudden COVID-19 epidemic, the Chinese environment department has ensured that the quality of the ecological environment has not been affected by the epidemic prevention and control while ensuring the smooth progress of the fight against pollution. China's medical waste disposal capacity has also been greatly improved during this epidemic. The review of China's environmental management strategy in response to COVID-19 can provide a reference for countries in the world that are still in the critical period of epidemic control; it can provide action guidelines for the ecological environment system to respond to sudden pandemic events in the future.

Keywords: COVID-19; Environmental management; Medical waste treatment; Ministry of ecology and environment; Text mining.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

Change of COVID-19 related articles as a percentage of total articles and the monthly change rate of confirmed number in China from January to September.

Fig. 2

High-frequency words cloud.

Fig. 3

The relationship between different words groups.

Fig. 4

Timeline of MEE in response to COVID-19.

Fig. 5

Accumulated disposal of medical waste nationwide since Jan 21 and medical waste was collected and disposed nationwide on the day of every announcement.

Fig. 6

Medical waste disposal capacity of different levels.

Fig. 7

PM2.5 concentration and the percentage decrease compared to the same period in 2019.

Fig. 8

Changes in surface water quality.