Strategies for ensuring required service level for COVID-19 herd immunity in Indian vaccine supply chain

Post COVID-19 vaccine development, nations are now getting ready to face another challenge: how to effectively distribute vaccines amongst the masses to quickly achieve herd immunity against the infec-tion. According to some experts, herd immunity for COVID-19 can be achieved by inoculating 67% of the population. India may find it difficult to achieve this service level target, owing to several infrastructural deficiencies in its vaccine supply chain. Effect of these deficiencies is to cause frequent lead time dis-ruptions. In this context, we develop a novel modelling approach to identify few nodes, which require additional inventory allocations (strategic inventory reserves) to ensure minimum service level (67%) un-der the possibility of lead time disruptions. Later, through an illustrative case study on distribution of Japanese Encephalitis vaccine, we identify conditions under which strategic inventory reserve policy can-not be practically implemented to meet service level targets. Nodes fulfilling these conditions are termed as critical nodes and must be overhauled structurally to make the implementation of strategic inventory policy practically viable again. Structural overhauling may entail installation of better cold storage facili-ties, purchasing more quality transport vans, improving reliability of transport network, and skills of cold storage manager by training. Ideally, conditions for identifying critical nodes for COVID-19 vaccine distri-bution must be derived separately by substituting COVID-19 specific parametric values in our model. In the absence of the required data for COVID-19 scenario, JE specific criteria can be used heuristically to identify critical nodes and structurally overhaul them later for efficiently achieving service level targets.(c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Post COVID-19 vaccine development, the distribution of vaccines has become a challenge, especially for India due to its infrastructural deficiencies. A novel modelling approach is proposed to identify critical nodes and implement structural overhauling to achieve service level targets effectively.