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; Pandemic management; Service value chain; Supply chain management; Theory of constraints.

Fig. 1

Typical logistic curve

Fig. 2

Vicious cycles amplifying the crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic

Fig. 3

Dilemma in developing the right approach to tackle the pandemic

Fig. 4

Conceptual representation of cross-unit contamination across population zones

Fig. 5

Process flow of the pandemic-management service value chain

Fig. 6

Intra-zonal, information-driven PM-SVC approach

Fig. 7

Template for intra-zonal pandemic management strategy

Fig. 8

The STOP Covid-19 plan at a glance