RESPONDING TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
“ Flying Blind”: Canada’s Supply Chain
Infrastructure and the COVID-19 Pandemic Anne W. Snowdon and Pierre-Gerlier Forest
Abstract Canada’s COVID-19 response has been described as slow, with reactive decision making that has left the most vulnerable populations at risk of infection and death from the virus. Yet, within and across the provincial health systems, the supply chain processes and data infrastructure needed to generate the relevant data for and evidence of the spread of COVID-19 and the health system’s capacity to respond to the pandemic are non-existent in Canada. Emerging evidence from a national research study highlights the significance of supply chain data infrastructure and processes that offer transparent, real-time data to inform decisions that support a coordinated, evidence-informed pandemic strategy that is proactive and capable of protecting the health of every Canadian.
Introduction
Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been profiled as “slow to act,” with limited international surveillance and delays in implementing protective measures such as physical distancing, border closure and the generalized use of personal protective equipment (PPE) to contain the spread of the virus (Doolittle et al. 2020). This widely held view suggests that Canadian decision makers had the opportunity to respond more quickly but did not. Yet, health leaders have had little or
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no relevant information, limited data and even fewer analytics tools to inform decisions and actions to manage this pandemic proactively and decisively. The legacy of this pandemic should not be the slowness in taking action – which, from an international perspective, is debatable – but the complete absence of robust, transparent data infrastructure with digital platforms and tools to inform leadership decisions to enable an effective pandemic response. Evidence of the Impact of Supply Chain Infrastructure and Pandemic Management
When supply chain processes are interrupted, there are severe consequences that can place patients and clinicians at great risk. A flood in 2012 at a Sanofi Pasteur plant in Toronto, the supplier of a bladder cancer drug called ImmuCyst, resulted in a significant worldwide shortage (Mostafid et al. 2015) and lengthy delays in treatment for patients. When Hurricane Maria knocked out the electrical grid in Puerto Rico in 2017, Baxter’s plant – one of the United States’ only manufacturers of intravenous (IV) bags – experienced a severe stock shortage (Wong 2018). Canadian and US hospitals were left without the needed supply of IV bags, limiting their ability to deliver IV medications for a number of weeks. Supply chain interruptions during public health crises are also well documented.