India needs to get into vaccine production in a big way: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

India should step up research on communicable diseases and get into vaccine production in a big way, says biotechlogy industry veteran Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw in backdrop of coronavirus outbreak globally. Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon Ltd also urged government to rope in private sector to boost diagstic capacity to deal with COVID-19 cases.

"w we realise that it cant be contained so easily," she said on World Health Organisation's assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic.

According to her, response of US and Europe has been very slow in containing it. "w that y are responding, y realise that it has spre quite a lot", Mazumdar-Shaw told PTI in an interview. What's even more scary is that re are t eugh diagstic kits available (in major coronavirus-affected countries) for quick diagsis, she said.

"You can't even do mass screening. Even in a country like US, even though people are exhibiting all se symptoms, y are basically taking chest x-rays and quarantining m. y don't have eugh kits to really deal with every case. So, it's quite worrying, because you can see how it's surging," Mazumdar-Shaw said.

Countries like China and parts of Asia such as Singapore have contained it, she ted. In India, coronavirus positive cases are low at moment, but, one has to wait and see how far it can be contained, she said, ding companies in India are taking immediate rapid response steps. Biocon for example has started checking temperatures of all people entering its premises -- employees and visitors from Monday. Mazumdar-Shaw stressed need for Indian government to focus on diagstics w.

"Because just restricting it to a few government labs is going to be very difficult for government to deal with huge volumes that could pile up. Many of se could be negative but we have to check. Private sector also should be roped in to offer some of se rapid tests," she said.

Biocon is willing to set up a testing facility for coroavirus, she said, ding, re is a need to very rapidly increase number of diagstic centres in India. "Orwise, we will t have capacity at some st to screen people who are displaying se symptoms," she said. Mazumdar-Shaw said data is needed to kw profile of those exhibiting serious symptoms.

"All this data is very important; if you don't have diagstic kits and if you are second guessing, n you are t going to get credible data on which to act," she ded.

On impact of coronavirus on Indian biotechlogy industry, she said re was an opportunity for sector to start seriously looking at se kinds of viral diseases. "Indian public health system does t even mandate a flu-shot every year. I always take an annual flu-shot when I go abro or even here. So, se kinds of things are very important that we get into vaccine production in a big way, and getting understanding of viral epidemics is important, we need to a lot of studies on viruses", Mazumdar-Shaw said.

Even before coronavirus outbreak, she h asked government to allocate a big fund to create a viral and microbial repository, so that more research can be done and India can be in a state of preparedness in terms of vaccines and antibiotics.

"All this research is going to be very important for world. w, world has realised it has neglected antibiotics", she said.

Communicable diseases were dubbed "third world" or "developing world" diseases in some quarters. "That's t true anymore; it (communicable diseases) affects whole world because of travel and migration. This is an opportunity to really strengn India biotech sector and make sure that you start researching on all se communicable diseases as well", Mazumdar-Shaw said.