Researchers roll out data on COVID vaccine distribution and waste

Date:
April 1, 2022
Source:
North Carolina State University
Summary:
Researchers are rolling out a data set that provides detailed
information on COVID-19 vaccine shipments and wastage across the
United States, with the goal of spurring new data analysis to
improve vaccination efforts in the future.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers are rolling out a data set that provides detailed information
on COVID-19 vaccine shipments and wastage across the United States, with
the goal of spurring new data analysis to improve vaccination efforts
in the future. The work stems from a collaboration between researchers
at North Carolina State University and BuzzFeed News.


==========================================================================
"The development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines has been a
monumental undertaking," says Ali Hajbabaie, corresponding author of the
paper and an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State. "And while it's been a remarkable accomplishment, there are also opportunities for us to learn how to improve the
vaccine supply chain. What are the logistical challenges associated
with transportation and distribution of vaccines for COVID-19? How can
we study this? What can we learn from it?" "For this work, we focused
on collecting data regarding vaccine shipment and wastage," says Leila Hajibabai, co-author of the paper and an assistant professor in NC State's Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. "And
we're making that data publicly available to encourage the broader
research community to analyze the data so that we can learn as much from
it as possible. We also want to inspire other researchers to make their
data publicly available in a timely manner." "We did some simple analyses
in this paper to highlight the potential of the data, but we think there
is much more to be done, and we want to tap into the expertise of other researchers to make the most of this information," says Hajbabaie.

The researchers collected vaccine shipment data from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This data includes the type of
vaccine, the amount of vaccine, and the date that each specific shipment
was sent to each of 47,188 specific vaccination sites, such as clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and doctor's offices.

The researchers also collected data from the CDC on the amount of
vaccine that was spoiled and had to be disposed of by awardees. This
could be because a vial was broken, because it was stored at an
improper temperature, because it was past its expiration date, and so
on. Awardees are large-scale entities that are responsible for overseeing specific vaccination sites. There were 92 awardees nationally, and the researchers have wastage data from 58 of them. Examples of awardees
include individual states, federal entities such as the Department of
Defense, federal programs such as the Veterans Health Administration,
and large-scale retailers such as CVS and Walgreens. Wastage data was
reported on a semi-regular basis -- often daily, but not always.



========================================================================== "This data was not made available outside of the CDC until we asked
for it," Hajbabaie says. "We were only able to get this data due to a collaboration with BuzzFeed, which obtained the data from CDC under a
FOIA request." This paper includes the shipment and wastage data from
Jan. 1, 2021 to March 31, 2021.

"However, we think it is possible that there will be significantly more
data forthcoming," Hajbabaie says. "For example, the CDC provided us
with additional shipment data from December 2021. However, we received
that too recently to include in this paper." "In the paper, we outline
some directions for future work, such as how to account for vaccine
hesitancy in order to optimize the supply chain and distribution network
for vaccination moving forward," Hajibabai says. "For example, we can
estimate the demand and waste accordingly and make recommendations to seamlessly schedule patients and reduce wastage.

"But it's not an exhaustive list. While we are continuing to work with
this data set ourselves, we're sure there are things we haven't thought
of. That's one of the reasons we think it is important for the research community to make its data publicly available in a timely manner --
it will allow all of us to make progress on real-world challenges
more quickly." The paper, "Using COVID-19 Data on Vaccine Shipments
and Wastage to Inform Modeling and Decision-making," is published open
access in the journal Transportation Science. The paper was co-authored
by Dan Vergano of BuzzFeed News and Julie Swann, the department head
and A. Doug Allison Distinguished Professor of the Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State.

The work was done with support from the National Science Foundation under
grant number 2124825, and under cooperative agreement number NU38OT000297
from the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
North_Carolina_State_University. Original written by Matt Shipman. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Leila Hajibabai, Ali Hajbabaie, Julie Swann, Dan Vergano. Using
COVID-19
Data on Vaccine Shipments and Wastage to Inform Modeling
and Decision- Making. Transportation Science, 2022; DOI:
10.1287/trsc.2022.1134 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220401122136.htm

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