--Amitabh Kant& Kowthamraj V.S
(Sri Amitabh Kant is CEO and Kowthamraj V.S. is a Young Professional at NITI Aayog. Views expressed are personal.)
Coronavirus has impacted millions and killed overthirty thousand
people already across the globe since its emergence in Wuhan, China, in
December last year. It has forced people to quarantine, socially distance themselves
and compelled nations to lock down their populations. It will cause the biggest
destruction to global economy ever witnessed, leading to a major slump in
global GDP. In India, we arewitnessingthe lockdown of 18% of the world’s
population for a three-week period. This has huge implications on the flow of
goods and commodities for daily existence of citizens as well as ensuring
supplies of essentials to confront the pandemic itself.
Inthis atmosphere of uncertainty, the biggest risk faced by all
nations is the potential breakdown of their healthcare system, resources and
supply chain. Covid-19’s countries have witnessed a dramatic demand for medical
supplies, test kits, respirators, masks, tubes, robes, thermometers, hazmat
suitsand health workersprecisely at a time when the traditional global supply
chainsare shutting down.
After the 2015 outbreak of MERS, which seriously impaired its economy,
South Korea analyzed what had gone wrong. There weren’t enough test kits, which
resulted in people with MERS shuttling from one hospital to another just to get
a confirmation of their diagnosis. Also, nearly 83% of the transmission was due
to just five ‘super-spreaders’—44% or nearly 81 of the 186 MERS-affected people
had been exposed in nosocomial transmission at 16 hospitals. What if an
elaborate testing regime had tested, contact-mapped and isolated those five
people to contain the spread in time?
One of the reasons for lower testing frequency is the challenges in
large-scale availability of testkits and allied medical supplies. Most virus-detecting
kits are available only in big cities.The pandemic does not recognize
geographical boundaries, race, ethnicity and economic status. Shoring up the
healthcare system alone will not make any region resilient to future pandemics,
some of which might even be more dangerous than Covid-19. The world has to
think differently; it has to think better.
The fact of the matter is that an excellent healthcare system will still
fall short during a pandemic. The number of intensive care units and associated
survival tools required in a pandemic will be enormously higher than normal. This
underscores a need for an enormous supplychain ramp-up at short notice.
The traditional healthcare supply chain, for the most part,
comprises sets of highly specialized and relatively small factory units.
Achieving scale is not a decision; it is a skill. Scaling needs high-volume
planning, credit, global infrastructure, social capitaland sophisticated
deal-making. That is why even in China, the traditional healthcare supplychain
was not enough to meet the demand of survival tools like masks. China’s BYD (EV
and battery maker) appointed a task force comprising 3,000 engineers to build
production lines at an existing plant in Shenzhenusing 90% of in-house
components. They became the world’s largest mask-maker in a month. Most
healthcare companies neither have those many engineers nor the production
capacity and tooling in a single unit. Tata and Mahindra in India are now
gearing up to produce crucial supplies like ventilators.
Health workers take on a disproportionate share of infection. Health
workers’ safety is particularly important for India because it faces a severe
shortage of doctors and nurses. In China and Italy, the fight against coronavirus
has taken a huge toll on health workers. Protecting health workers who are in
the forefront of the response is critical. The necessitates that we ensure
personal protection kits—gloves, coverall, goggles, N-95 masks, shoe covers,
face shield, triple-layer medical masks—and facilitate adequate food and
resting facilities in hospitals. We greatly appreciate that the Government of
India has provided Rs 50 lakh health insurance for all health personnel.
We have faced five pandemics in the last 20 years (one pandemic
every five years). If countries have to become truly resilient to pandemics, it
is imperative that they embrace the concept of ‘dormant consortium’.In essence,
digital models of pandemics should be built and countries should put the best
supply-chain experts of different industries in a room and request them to find
out the synergies that even they didn’t know existed to tackle the scenarios.Governments
should identify companies (auto, electronics, apparel, among others) that have
the capacity to make certain categories of essential supplies at scale and club
them together with specialized healthcare firms. A watertight, time-limited intellectual
property agreement can be designed. An empowered representative from regulatory
and standards’ agencies should be made part of the consortium. A big clothing
company cannot be made to wait for a long time to get necessary approvals for
hazmat suit production. These multiple dormant consortium will come to life
when the government declares an imminent pandemic.
Electronics and semiconductor manufacturers who have millions of
workers trained to handle thousands of sophisticated cleanrooms (which mandate
full-body clean suits) will have a huge role to play in pandemic-resilient
supply chains. Since copper kills most microbes, pandemic-adaptive packaging
can be sourced from copper foil suppliers to the battery industry. Distribution
infrastructure of companies such as Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Uber, Ola can be
used to enable mass collection (by trained social workers) of swab samples to
protect the healthcare workers. A reserve army of healthcare workers should be
created to manage a pandemic.
In India, while government, private offices and commercial
establishments have been closed down, exemptions have been provided for shops
dealing with food, groceries, fruits and vegetables and delivery of all
essential goods, including food, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, through e-commerce.
This has been done to ensure that the common citizen does not suffer and the
supply chains are kept intact.
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