Hazardous infectious waste collection and government aid distribution during COVID-19: A robust mathematical leader-follower model approach

The outbreak of COVID-19 has posed significant challenges to governments across the world. The increase in hazardous infectious waste (HIW) caused by the pandemic is associated with the risk of transmitting the virus. In this study, hazardous waste includes infectious waste generated both by individuals and by hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. To control the outbreak by maintaining social distance and home quarantine protocols, daily necessities and health supplies must be provided to the people affected. Governments play an essential role in the management of the crisis, creating an elaborate plan for collecting HIW and providing necessities and health supplies. This paper proposes a leader-follower approach for hazardous infectious waste collection and government aid distribution to control COVID-19. At the top level of the model, government policies are designed to support people by distributing daily necessities and health supplies, and to support contractors by waste collection. The lower level of the model is related to the operational decisions of contractors with limited capacities. Due to the potential risk of virus transmission via contaminated waste, the proposed model considers the complications imposed on contractors at the lower level. Applying a stochastic programming approach, four possible scenarios are examined, dependent of the severity of the outbreak. As a solution approach, the Benders decomposition method is combined with Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions. The results show that government support, in addition to much better management of citizen demand, can control the spread of the virus by implementing quarantine decisions.