COVID-19 pandemic: Adequate planning, industry partnerships can help govts overcome logistics woes, says DHL study

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed several logistics-related challenges in terms of inbound logistics and distribution networks, a white paper  by logistics firm DHL has found. Sufficient planning and effective partnerships with supply chain partners can be of crucial help to governments looking to secure medical supplies during such health emergencies, said the study, which was conducted with McKinsey & Company as an analytics partner. While authorities in India are attempting to ensure that a vaccine against the novel coronavirus is ready by January 2021, ensuring that the vaccine reaches vulnerable sections of society at the earliest will be a steep challenge. This will involve not just transportation of the vaccines, but creating adequate cold storage facilities for their storage. Commenting on such logistical challenges involved in the fight against COVID-19, Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer at DHL said, “The COVID-19 crisis emerged with an unprecedented breadth and impact. It required governments, businesses,and the logistics industry alike to adapt quickly to new challenges.As a world leader in logistics, we want to share our experience of operating during one of the biggest health crises in recent history,in order to develop strategies in an ever-more connected world.” DHL’s white paper notes that there are currently about 250 candidates for a COVID-19 vaccine in various stages of development. “The potential vaccines are being developed on multiple platforms with each platform generating the immune response through a different mechanism…Different platforms will likely come with different temperature requirements for transportation and storage. As a result, regional distribution capabilities, as well as packaging and transportation sustainability, will all likely be a function of whether temperature requirements for safe and efficacious vaccines will be as low as -80°C or end up falling in the +2–8°C range,” the study noted. Good infrastructure facilities, including a pre-established network of warehouses and transportation capabilities, can help ensure sufficient stock of critical supplies, the study noted. In the past as well, tackling shortages of medical supplies has been a key component of the fight against the novel coronavirus. A study by McKinsey in July showed, for instance, that many regions around the world are experiencing a shortage of laboratory-based molecular-assay tests. The global capacity for molecular tests within laboratories was estimated to be around 14 million to 16 million tests a week, with the number of tests actually conducted being less than 10 million per week. Ensuring enough supplies of other medical supplies is also crucial in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. The World Health Organisation has estimated that 89 million medical masks are required each month. For examination gloves, that figure is said to be around 76 million. In order to tide over such shortages, the DHL study stresses the need for an information technology-enabled supply chain. IT tools can provide an up-to-the-minute accounting of inventory and provide important predictive information regarding both future demand and shipment routing, the study said. According to the John Hopkins University’s coronavirus research centre, there have been a total of 63,790,774 COVID-19 cases across the world till Tuesday. The United States, India and Brazil, in that order, have the highest number of coronavirus cases.