Building Resilient Vaccine Supply Chain during COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic occurred in the world in January 2020. Without specific vaccines and antiviral treatments, the virus easily spreads across different parts of the world. Accordance to the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 has widely spread to nearly all countries across six geographical regions (i.e., Western Pacific, Africa, Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia, Europe, and Americas). In doing so, different countries implemented various preventive measures like hand washing, lockdowns, social distancing, and mask-wearing to minimize the transmission of the virus. However, such preventive measures are short-term, ineffective, and may not be sustainable. The introduction of common vaccination campaigns is viewed as a vital effective way to against COVID-19. Over 60 vaccines for COVID-19 are either previously endorsed or going through clinical experiments. As expected, there will be an increasing need for people to accept vaccine injections. The vaccine is a highly vulnerable, high-value, and rare product in the world. As such, resilient vaccine supply chain management is urgently needed. Otherwise, the inferior quality of vaccines poses global health risks and causes the problem of wasting useful medical supplies. Nevertheless, some logistics firms encountered unfolded logistics challenges of the COVID-19 vaccine due to a lack of professionals, capacity, data integrity, inventory management, fluctuating demand, and geographic risk (e.g., vibration, location, shock, and temperature. In particular, most logistics firms and health specialists encounter severe challenges in managing the vaccine supply chain in remote areas or developing countries. Although the vaccine is a global and hot issue for researchers, industrial practitioners, local communities, and policymakers, there is scanty attention to investigating the establishment of a resilience vaccine supply chain management in the context of COVID-19. At present, only a few research groups have discussed the role of blockchain in vaccine supply chain management, however, the information is not enough to reveal the impact on how vaccine supply chain management of blockchain can mitigate the COVID-19 crisis. Therefore, this chapter will mainly focus on the overview of the influenza pandemic around the globe, the existing situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world and Hong Kong, the current development of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of blockchain in the vaccine supply chain, and the vaccine logistics in COVID-19.