India's research, manufacturing critical to fighting COVID-19: Bill Gates

India's research and manufacturing will be critical to fighting COVID-19 especially for making vaccines on a large scale, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said on Monday.

dressing Grand Challenges Annual Meeting 2020, Gates delved upon difficulties in vaccine development and diagstics of COVID-19.

American business magnate said India is "very inspiring" as it has me huge strides in improving health of its people in last two deces.

"And w, India's research and manufacturing will be critical to fighting COVID-19 especially when it comes to making vaccines at large scale," he said.

Gates said scientists all over world are involved in a particular 'grand challenge' -- ending current pandemic.

He said researchers are breaking down silos and rar than waiting to go through publication process, y are sharing data on a daily basis. "Since pandemic began, scientists have shared 1,37,000 viral COVID-19 gemic sequences," Microsoft Corp co-founder said. Even pharmaceutical companies are cooperating on production ways that really have never been seen before, he ded.

Talking about challenges in vaccine development, he said mRNA vaccine is an area where many have seen "great promises".

"Probably, first approved vaccine for COVID-19 will be mRNA," he said but ded that vaccine cant be counted on alone because it is very hard to scale up and has a logistical problem because it requires a proper cold chain.

Gates expressed hope that mRNA platform matures in years ahe so that its vaccines can be scaled up that can bring down costs as well cold chain requirement.

He also stressed on need for invation in diagstics platforms.

"Even when sometimes people are tested, results come back negative because some of tests are t sensitive to small na virus," he said, ding, this also les to infection.

"So, diagstics are letting us down," Gates said, stressing on asymptomatic nature of infection.

"Right w, current business model is identifying people with symptoms and we need to change that. We need sensitive and specific diagstic tests which matter and we need to make it easy to access," he said.

He also said although RT-PCR test has high specificity, a lot of challenge is about logistics.

Gates suggested that re should be test kits that can be spre out into community and can be stocked in medicine cabinets, community centres and pharmacies.

On cooperation by scientific fraternity, he ted that international teams of scientists are collaborating with full speed on vaccine clinical trials.

"One or more of se vaccines will be available by early next year and as re will be multiples vaccines, it is necessary to make sure to understand how exactly and where to use each of m," he said.

Gates said pace of science in fighting pandemic has been remarkable.

"But despite all this work, right w, as fast as science has moved... pandemic is still ahe of us. first COVID-19 vaccine will probably be fastest that humans have ever gone from identifying new disease to be able to immunise against it," he said.

"Still we all kw this virus has mand to plunge entire global ecomy into a deep recession," he ded.