A global sharing mechanism of resources: modeling a crucial step in the fight against pandemics

Abstract

To face pandemics like the one caused by COVID-19, resources such as personal protection equipment (PPE) are needed to reduce the infection rate and protect those in close contact with patients (Heymann and Shindo, 2020; Klompas et al., 2021). The demand for those products increases exponentially as the number of infected grows, outpacing any growth that local production facilities can achieve (Ranney et al., 2020, Wu et al., 2020). Disruptions in the global supply chain by closing factories or scaled-down transport routes can further increase resource scarcity (McMahon et al., 2020). During the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed a reflex of `our people first' in many regions, countries, and continents (Baldwin and Evenett, 2020). In this paper, however, we show that a cooperative sharing mechanism can substantially improve the ability to face epidemics. We present a stylized model in which communities share their resources such that each can receive resources whenever a local epidemic flares up. This can potentially prevent local resource exhaustion and reduce the total number of infected cases. We also show that the success of sharing resources heavily depends on having a sufficiently long delay between the onset of epidemics in different communities. This means that a global sharing mechanism should be paired with measures to slow down the spread of infections from one community to the other. Our work is a first step towards designing a resilient global supply chain mechanism that can deal with future pandemics by design, rather than being subjected to the coincidental and unequal distribution of opportunities per community at present.