Short-Term Routing Models for COVID-19 Treatment Transfer Between Hospitals

While technologies enable better observation and control over supply chain dynamics through visibility and real-time data analytics, the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified disruption-related challenges to supply chain network dynamics. Thus, these increased uncertainties and risks make it impossible to proactively predict the areas and sizes of surges in COVID-19 infections without limiting people’s freedom of movement. This notion implies that we may need to focus on reactive planning to transfer COVID-19 treatment between hospitals and/or hospital systems. We introduce an optimization model for reactive short-term vehicle routings for such transfers. The optimization model proposed in this study can simultaneously grasp vehicle movement and cargo location information while minimizing the total travel time of vehicles, which can handle the urgency of treatment transfers by changing the value of the limited travel time of vehicles. Although the model does not include every condition that can be considered in the treatment transfers between hospitals, it shows the potential of the model we proposed in the transfer of treatment in case of shortages. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Nucleoprotein Antibodies Derived from Pig Serum with a Controlled Specificity

Antibodies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) nucleoprotein (NP) were purified from pig serum through two steps: (1) isolation of anti-NP IgG antibodies using magnetic beads with immobilized human SARS-CoV-2 NP and (2) filtration of anti-spike protein (SP) IgG antibodies using magnetic beads with immobilized human SARS-CoV SP. The enhanced specificity of the purified antibodies to the NP of SARS-CoV-2 was demonstrated using an immunoassay with anti-NP IgG antibodies after the isolation and filtration steps. The binding constants (K-d) of the purified anti-NP IgG antibodies to the NP of SARS-CoV-2 and the SP of SARS-CoV were estimated using a surface plasmon resonance biosensor (SPR). A competitive assay using the two-step purified anti-NP IgG antibodies from pig serum demonstrated (a) the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in viral fluid and (b) the discrimination of SARS-CoV-2 from SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and CoV strain 229E in viral fluids.