‘By P. Sarojini’
New Delhi (CWBN)_ The American business magnet and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said on Monday that India’s research and manufacturing will be critical to fighting COVID-19 especially for making vaccines on a large scale. He added that India is ‘very inspiring’ as it has made huge strides in improving the health of its people in the past two decades.
Gates addressed the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting 2020 where he spoke about the difficulties in vaccine development and diagnostics of COVID-19. He said “And now, India’s research and manufacturing will be critical to fighting COVID-19 especially, when it comes to making vaccines at large scale”. He added that scientists all over the world are currently facing a particular ‘grand challenge’, in ending the pandemic outbreak.
The Microsoft cofounder said that researchers are breaking down silos and rather than waiting to go through the publication process, they are sharing data on a daily basis. He added, “Since the pandemic began, scientists have shared 1,37, 000 viral COVID-19 genomic sequences”. He said that the contribution from the pharmaceutical companies on the production is really huge which is never seen before.
Bill Gates talked about the challenges existing in vaccine development. He said that many have seen great promises in the area of mRNA vaccine. He said “Probably, the first approved vaccine for COVID-19 will be mRNA”. He added that the vaccine cannot be counted on alone as it is very hard to scale up and has a logistical problem due to the requirement of a proper cold chain.
Gates said he hopes the mRNA platform to mature in the years ahead so that its vaccines can be scaled up that can bring down the costs as well the cold chain requirement.
Gates emphasised on the need for innovation in diagnostics platforms. He said, “Even when sometimes people are tested, results come back negative because some of the tests are not sensitive to the small nano virus”. He added that this will also lead to infection. He stressed on the asymptomatic nature of the infection and said “So, the diagnostics are letting us down”. He stated that “Right now, the current business model is identifying people with symptoms and we need to change that. We need sensitive and specific diagnostic tests which matter and we need to make it easy to access”.
He said that although the RT-PCR test has high specificity, a lot of challenges exist in the logistics. He suggested that test kits can be spread out into the community and can be stocked in medicine cabinets, community centers and pharmacies.
He noted that the international teams of scientists are working together on the vaccine clinical trials with full speed and spirit to bring out the end product. He added “One or more of these vaccines will be available by early next year and as there will be multiples vaccines, it is necessary to make sure to understand how exactly and where to use each of them”.
Gates emphasised on the role of science in battling the pandemic and said that the pace of science in fighting the pandemic has been remarkable. He said “But despite all this work, right now, as fast as the science has moved…the pandemic is still ahead of us. The first COVID-19 vaccine will probably be the fastest that humans have ever gone from identifying the new disease to be able to immunise against it”. He added “Still we all know this virus has managed to plunge the entire global economy into a deep recession”.
