Abstract:The COVID-19 outbreak starting at the end of 2019 has turned into a huge public health crisis, with deep and long-lasting social-economic impact on China and around the world. Regrettably, such terrible events are no longer happening once in a century, but perhaps once in a decade or even sooner. Therefore, how to effectively deal with a large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease is an important and urgent question facing the world. The Covid-19 outbreak is both an unfortunate event and a great opportunity for learning. The arduous process of prevention and containment, with countless difficulties throughout, suggests that most of the problems are in fact a supply-and-demand problem, with a dysfunctional supply chain as the ultimate culprit. Drawing on the main principles of modern supply chain management theory, this article makes a number of suggestions for improving the prevention-and-containment process in the future, such as establishing a country-wide monitoring system for contagious diseases, maintaining national strategic safety inventories of key medical supplies, creating a national command center for emergency response and management, etc. On the other hand, as we continue to deal with the COVID-19, more and more attention will undoubtedly turn to economic re-development. By again relying on supply chain thinking, this article attempts to provide a unique angle for understanding the epidemic’s impact on industries, with suggestions for companies that are in the process of re-starting production.