A Model for Supply-Chain Decisions for Resource Sharing with an Application to Ventilator Allocation to Combat COVID-19

Sanjay Mehrotra; Hamed Rahimian; Masoud Barah; Fengqiao Luo; Karolina Schantz

In a more recent COVID-19-related study, the author [21] proposes a probability model to estimate the effectiveness of quarantine and isolation on controlling the spread of COVID-19. In the context of ventilator allocation, a conceptual framework for allocating ventilators in a public emergency is proposed in [30] . The problem of estimating mechanical ventilator demand in the United States during an influenza pandemic was considered in [22] . In a high severity pandemic scenario, a need of 35,000 to 60,500 additional ventilators to avert 178,000 to 308,000 deaths was estimated. Robust models for emergency staff deployment in the event of a flu pandemic were studied in [12] . Specifically, the authors focused on managing critical staff levels during such an event, with the goal of minimizing the impact of the pandemic. Effectiveness of the approach was demonstrated through experiments using realistic data.