Department of Statistics and Information Science, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City 242, Taiwan.
Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 31;19(11):6704. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19116704.
This study aimed to assess the gap between the supply and demand of adult surgical masks under limited resources. Owing to the implementation of the real-name mask rationing system, the historical inventory data of aggregated mask consumption in a pharmacy during the early period of the COVID-19 outbreak (April and May 2020) in Taiwan were analyzed for supply-side analysis. We applied the Voronoi diagram and areal interpolation methods to delineate the average supply of customer counts from a pharmacy to a village (administrative level). On the other hand, the expected number of demand counts was estimated from the population data. The relative risk (RR) of supply, which is the average number of adults served per day divided by the expected number in a village, was modeled under a Bayesian hierarchical framework, including Poisson, negative binomial, Poisson spatial, and negative binomial spatial models. We observed that the number of pharmacies in a village is associated with an increasing supply, whereas the median annual per capita income of the village has an inverse relationship. Regarding land use percentages, percentages of the residential and the mixed areas in a village are negatively associated, while the school area percentage is positively associated with the supply in the Poisson spatial model. The corresponding uncertainty measurement: villages where the probability exceeds the risk of undersupply, that is, Pr (RR < 1), were also identified. The findings of the study may help health authorities to evaluate the spatial allocation of anti-epidemic resources, such as masks and rapid test kits, in small areas while identifying priority areas with the suspicion of undersupply in the beginning stages of outbreaks.
本研究旨在评估有限资源下成人外科口罩的供需差距。由于实施了实名口罩配给制度，因此对台湾 COVID-19 疫情早期（2020 年 4 月和 5 月）一家药店汇总口罩消费的历史库存数据进行了供应方分析。我们应用 Voronoi 图和区域插值方法划定了从一家药店到一个村庄（行政级别）的顾客计数的平均供应。另一方面，从人口数据估计了需求计数的预期数量。在贝叶斯层次框架下，对供应的相对风险（RR）进行建模，即每天服务的成年人数量除以一个村庄的预期数量，包括泊松、负二项式、泊松空间和负二项式空间模型。我们观察到，村庄中的药店数量与供应的增加呈正相关，而村庄的人均年收入中位数与供应呈负相关。关于土地利用百分比，村庄中的住宅和混合区域的百分比呈负相关，而学校区域的百分比在泊松空间模型中与供应呈正相关。相应的不确定性测量：识别出村庄中概率超过供应不足风险的概率，即 Pr（RR < 1）。研究结果可能有助于卫生当局在疫情爆发初期评估小区域内的防疫资源（如口罩和快速检测试剂盒）的空间分配情况，并确定供应不足的优先区域。
