Collaboration Strategies for Private COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Chain Under Demand Uncertainty: An Indian Perspective

In 2020, the COVD-19 pandemic emerged as the most severe crisis of the century. Several vaccine manufacturing firms have taken the necessary initiatives to combat this problem. However, profitability issues can bring down these firms' vaccine manufacturing efforts, thus leading to lower vaccination coverage. Motivated by this issue, we depict a private COVID-19 vaccine supply chain with a supply chain framework comprising of one vaccine manufacturer and multiple private hospitals under demand uncertainty. We incorporate a Stackelberg game-theoretic approach to demonstrate the collaboration between the vaccine manufacturer and the private hospital using wholesale price, two-part tariff and revenue sharing contracts. We determine the optimal number of vaccines and coordination criteria for each contract. Using a real-life approximation of Indian data, we conduct several numerical studies and facilitate the visual depiction of all the theoretical insights obtained from the model. We also discuss the managerial implications of this study. As per our analysis, when private hospitals procure a higher number of vaccines from the vaccine manufacturer, the two-part tariff contract-based collaboration mechanism yields a win-win situation for both the private hospitals and the vaccine manufacturer and is better than the wholesale price contract.

The impact of network topology on air transportation robustness to pandemics

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a brand-new challenge to the design and management of the air transportation network (ATN). Many countries have partially or entirely shut down their international flights during this period to contain the spread of COVID-19. However, the changes in the international connectivity of different countries during this period varied greatly, as the ATNs of different countries have different structures. Accordingly, this paper studies the impact of network topology on the international robustness of a country?s ATN to pandemic-induced disruptions. Therein, a Weighted International Efficiency metric is proposed to evaluate a country?s connectivity to other countries, followed by deriving an International Robustness metric that measures the ability of a country?s ATN to maintain international connections during pandemics. Further, three internal and external topological metrics are defined to characterize the structure of an ATN. The results of correlation and regression analysis show that the proportion of international airports inside a country is the most important factor in determining its international robustness to pandemics, followed by the density of the domestic connections. Surprisingly, the number of directly connected foreign cities has little effect on international robustness. The analysis demonstrates the importance of studying ATN topology during emergencies. IEEE