Pandemic Security Project Workshop 1

On May 3rd and 4th, 2022, the Dartmouth Global Health Initiative's "Pandemic Security Project" held a workshop to investigate lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic for Medical Supply Chain Security and Governance.

This workshop was the second in a series of events organized by the Pandemic Security Project (PSP). The Global Health Initiative within Dartmouth College's John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding founded PSP in the wake of COVID-19 to address key issues in pandemic preparedness. Pandemic preparedness, like all great challenges facing human civilization, is an interdisciplinary, cross sector, and cross border problem. PSP brings leading experts together to create an opportunity for interdisciplinary cross pollination and practical problem solving. PSP investigates the incentives, governance structures, and policy instruments that will improve the speed, scale, and access to essential medicine and care at home and abroad.

Background:

Covid-19 vaccines were developed in record time, but governments around the world did not invest at levels that were commensurate with the tremendous social value of ending this pandemic in the shortest period. Social value can be measured in millions of lives and trillions in economic activity. Covid vaccines saved an estimated 20 million lives in their first year and the IMF estimated that "vaccinating at least 60% of the population in every country by the first half of 2022 would yield trillions of dollars in economic benefits globally, dwarfing the potential costs required to achieve the necessary levels of vaccine manufacturing, purchase, distribution, and administration." [1]

In particular, the global scramble for vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and PPE revealed critical manufacturing capacity constraints and vulnerabilities in medical supply chains and raised awareness of the need to invest in the biotechnology industry as a strategic asset in any government response to health emergencies. Better planning, coordination, and governance could resolve bottlenecks and expand capacity in future emergencies.

Questions:

Could governments have taken measures to expand production capacity and access sooner? Were there hard limits to what the system could bear (i.e., how much capacity could be mobilized within the first year versus a 5-year period)?  Could the United States have recalibrated policy in early 2021 to push companies to expand their capacity further over the remainder of the year? Finally, did US policy choices in 2020 inadvertently constrain the ability of the US to expand domestic capacity? What can be done domestically and multilaterally to improve coordination and governance? This workshop will examine methods to ensure that procurement mechanisms, manufacturing systems, and the supply chains that support them can be both resilient and nimble in emergencies.

Workshop objectives:

A first order goal of this workshop is to bring leading experts together to share current work, compare perspectives, and test ideas. A second order goal is to identify and refine proposals that will allow nations and manufacturers to be better equipped to adapt and respond to future health emergencies.

Participants:

Workshop participants included experts in the fields of Economics from Dartmouth College and The Peterson Institute for International Economics, as well as representatives from the Center for Global Development, MITRE, MIT, The Global Health Innovation Alliance Accelerator, and the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Participant List: