A multi-echelon dynamic cold chain for managing vaccine distribution.

While cold chain management has been part of healthcare systems, enabling the efficient administration of vaccines in both urban and rural areas, the COVID-19 virus has created entirely new challenges for vaccine distributions. With virtually every individual worldwide being impacted, strategies are needed to devise best vaccine distribution scenarios, ensuring proper storage, transportation and cost considerations. Current models do not consider the magnitude of distribution efforts needed in our current pandemic, in particular the objective that entire populations need to be vaccinated.

Convalescent plasma bank facility location-allocation problem for COVID-19.

With convalescent plasma being recognized as an eminent treatment option for COVID-19, this paper addresses the location-allocation problem for convalescent plasma bank facilities. This is a critical topic, since limited supply and overtly increasing cases demand a well-established supply chain. We present a novel plasma supply chain model considering stochastic parameters affecting plasma demand and the unique features of the plasma supply chain.

Selection of the best healthcare waste disposal techniques during and post COVID-19 pandemic era.

In recent years, municipal authorities especially in the developing nations are battling to select the best health care waste (HCW) disposal technique for the effective treatment of the medical wastes during and post COVID-19 era. As evaluation of various disposal alternatives of HCW and selection of the best technique requires considering various tangible and intangible criteria, this can be framed as multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this paper, we propose an assessment framework for the selection of the best HCW disposal technique based on socio-technical and triple bottom line perspectives.