Stopping Covid-19: A pandemic-management service value chain approach

Abstract

A logical strategy to contain the Covid-19 pandemic is to completely isolate everyone for 2 weeks (the incubation period of the virus). However, such a strategy can have prohibitive economic and social costs and, therefore, will be difficult to implement. At the same time, the current situation is leading to an expanding humanitarian, health and economic crisis. Based on principles of the Theory of Constraints, we propose in this article the "Shutting-down Transmission Of Pandemic" (STOP Covid-19) plan that would reliably contain the pandemic, mitigate its economic consequences, and boost societal confidence. This plan requires the implementation of four strategies over 90 days: (a) stop all international, domestic passenger air and intercity bus/train travel; (b) create administrative zones of about 1 million people; (c) stop all non-emergency cross-zonal travel except for transportation of goods, and (d) deploy an information-driven service value chain to control the spread of the pandemic within a zone.Keywords Covid-19 · Service value chain · Supply chain management · Theory of constraints · Pandemic management Left to its own progression the Covid-19 pathogen could spread through the world population following a logistic curve (Sanderson 2020). As can be seen from Fig. 1, in the first half of the progression, there is an exponential growth in the number of infections. The rate of growth is determined by the average number of susceptible people exposed to the pathogen by a typical infected person during their infectious phase. The spread of the virus quickens as the value of the transmission rate increases. As the number of infected people increases, the number of uninfected people declines, and the rate of growth of infections will start to reduce progressively. By the saturation point of the contagion, almost everyone would have been infected. To put this in perspective, assuming a 1% mortality rate and no seasonal effects of virus prevalence and virulence, there would be about 70 million deaths, worldwide,

COVID-19 pandemic related supply chain studies: A systematic review

“…The analysis reveals that only five articles on COVID-19 and the supply chain are theoretically grounded in this sense. The tenets of the theory of constraint are used in one study to formulate a pandemic management plan ( Baveja et al, 2020 ). Dynamic system theory is used as a methodological principle in another article to design the digital twin necessary for disruption management ( Ivanov and Dolgui, 2020c ).…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has also impacted supply chain relationship management. The limited scope of social interactions among supply chain partners is reported in one study ( Baveja et al, 2020 ). This decline in interactions causes information incompleteness, which can lead to information ambiguity and a lack of clarity and precision ( Gunessee and Subramanian, 2020 ).…”

Who wants to reopen the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic? The daring and uncaring

“…The relatively high infection and mortality rates of COVID-19 has forced countries to take unique approaches to prevent, contain, and reduce the spread of the virus. Widespread strategies include face mask wearing ( Howard, 2020 ), contact tracing ( Ferretti et al, 2020 ), and economic shutdowns ( Baveja, Kapoor, & Melamed, 2020 ; Crayne, 2020 ).…”

“…Of these strategies, economic shutdowns are among the most contentious. Economic shutdowns refer to prohibiting employees to work on site, which aids in preventing the spread of COVID-19 by reducing airborne transmission ( Baveja et al, 2020 ; Omary et al, 2020 ). During an economic shutdown, some employees can still work from home, particularly those in white-collar occupations; but many are unable to work altogether, particularly those in blue-collar occupations.…”

Challenge of COVID-19 crisis managed by emergency department of a big tertiary centre in Saudi Arabia

“…All major departments broke barriers and made collaborative plans to help improve ED patient flow. This joint approach, in mass casualty situations translates to a successful outcome [ 14 , 15 ].…”