ABSTRACT
Introduction: Falsified medical products may contain no active ingredient, the wrong active ingredient, or the wrong amount of the correct active ingredient [1]. The prevalence of falsified medicines spans from 1% in developed settings to 10% in the Global South [2]. Due to broken supply chains, strong demand for medicines and limited capacities of law enforcement, the COVID-19 pandemic created the optimal conditions for the falsified medicines' market to expand. Objective: Aim of this is to present evidence about the surge in counterfeit medicines amid the COVID-19 crisis. Methods: This review examines the existing published scientific literature and peer-to-peer networks, grey literature as well as briefs and policy reports on counterfeit medicines amid COVID-19 pandemic. Results: According to EOCD, People's Republic of China and India are the primary producers of counterfeit medicines, with the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Hong Kong (China) serving as transit economies [3]. The review has identified three areas of impact for counterfeit medicines amid COVID-19. These are: (i) the increased demand for COVID-19-reated medicines, due to the medical supply restrictions related to the pandemic. These restrictions have been introduced by local authorities (e.g. supply restriction for Chloroquine and Azithromycin) or occurred because of air traffic reduction. Over 60 countries have implemented export restrictions and 25% of restricted products were medicines [4];(ii) E-commerce as a relevant platform for substandard medicines. For instance, advertisements of illicit COVD-19-related medical products have been reported on social media platforms, such as Instagram. According to the industry, online distribution becomes predominant and about 50% of purchases of illicit medicines are done on-line [5];(iii) weak regulatory frameworks, including insufficient technical capacity, constrained access and ineffective over-sight to address substandard and falsified medical products. WHO reports that 30 per cent of national regulatory authorities do not have full effective capacity to perform their functions [6]. Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic has increased the vulnerability to counterfeit medicines, leading to serious damage to the health of individuals or failure to treat their medical needs adequately. The identifies three relevant governance gaps (increased demand, E-commerce and weak regulatory frameworks) to be further addressed in dedicated fora.
ABSTRACT
Due to the accelerated activity in e-commerce especially since the COVID-19 outbreak, the congestion in the transportation systems is continually increasing, which affects on-time delivery of regular parcels and groceries. An important constraint is the fact that a given number of delivery drivers have a limited amount of time and daily capacity, leading to the need for effective capacity planning. In this paper, we employ a Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) approach to predict the daily delivery capacity of a fleet starting their routes from a cross-dock depot and for a specific time slot. Each prediction specifies how many deliveries in total the drivers in a given cross-dock can make for a certain time-slot of the day. Our results show that the GPR model outperforms other state-of-the-art regression methods. We also improve our model by updating it daily using shipments delivered within the day, in response to unexpected events during the day, as well as accounting for special occasions like Black Friday or Christmas. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.