A staff of a company, which used to deal with industrial waste, disinfects disposal buckets filled with medical waste in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, March 5, 2020. (Xinhua/Cai Yang)

 
China has disposed of 182,000 tonnes of medical waste since late January amid the fight against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE).

As of March 21, China's medical waste disposal capacity had reached 6,066.8 tonnes per day, up from 4,902.8 tonnes each day before the epidemic outbreak, the MEE said in a statement.

The disposal capacity of Hubei Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, rose from 180 tonnes per day before the outbreak to 667.4 tonnes, according to the statement.

Currently, the treatment of medical sewage in China is steady and orderly, with disinfection measures being strictly implemented, the ministry said.

Environmental authorities carried out 21,399 surveys on the country's drinking water sources and did not find any impact from the epidemic on the quality of the water sources.

The MEE also logged improvement in air quality for 337 cities it has monitored, with the share of good air quality days at 86.3 percent from January 20 to March 21, up 8.8 percentage points year on year.