Are global supply chains ready once COVID-19 vaccines and antivirals become available?

With the ongoing global health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are racing to produce both antivirals and vaccines for it. The market is expected to create a massive demand for such antiviral and treatment products. It is in this light that a group of De La Salle University faculty researchers embarked on a study that identifies the challenges and concerns that pharmaceutical companies will encounter in their global supply chains, as they address the needs of 188 countries currently affected by the virus.

In their paper “Can Global Pharmaceutical Supply Chains Scale Up Sustainably for the COVID-19 Crisis?” (available in ScienceDirect.com), Chemistry Department Full Professor Dr. Derrick Ethelbhert Yu, Chemical Engineering Full Professor Dr. Luis Razon, and Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and University Fellow Dr. Raymond Girard Tan discuss the high likelihood of global shortages of treatments and vaccines developed for COVID-19.

Tan explains that one of the major challenges that pharmaceutical companies will face is the need to invest heavily and with urgency to scale up the production of treatments against the new coronavirus. “Normally this is done at a more leisurely pace, but now there’s a rush to produce very quickly at such a large scale, and with so many unknowns,” he says.

The authors note that another challenge will be disruptions in the supply chain brought about by the pandemic. Tan says that if there are reduced capacities in sectors such as transportation or manufacturing—those that will affect the supply chain of producing pharmaceutical products— then companies will have difficulty in developing enough drugs for all of those infected with COVID-19.

Likewise, the authors highlight the need to maintain a proper system-wide perspective to ensure that the complex sustainability areas of rapid production scale-up are anticipated properly and addressed accordingly.

Yet another challenge that the researchers point out is the game theoretic analysis of conflicts of interest among parties in global value chains. This means that in countries where they will produce the active ingredients for the treatments, governments may try to prioritize their constituents and monopolize the supply of drugs.

As the pandemic progresses, there is also the possibility of a greater environmental impact occurring throughout the life cycles of these pharmaceutical products. The research cites another study that focuses on emerging trace pollutants found in unmetabolized drugs and their metabolites, which cause problems in aquatic ecosystems because they are not destroyed by sewage treatment plants.

Lastly, the researchers highlight the importance of allocation strategies, should there be a shortage in the supply of treatments for all those infected, to ensure that available resources will be used with maximum effectiveness.

The researchers warn in their study that once effective pharmaceutical treatments are found, “there will be the major engineering challenge of ramping up production at a rate that matches the pandemic.”

Contact: Dr. Raymond Girard Tan | [email protected]