India will play a key role in equitable vaccine distribution

Hyderabad: More dialogue and more collaboration will make our ability stronger in battling the pandemic. India's manufacturing capacity in harmonisation with other countries' work will help in producing more vaccines, said Dr Peter Marks, Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), FDA.

"India will play a key role in equitable vaccine distribution. The pharmaceutical production capacity of India will help us. We need to collaborate with each other. There is a need that we use each others' speciality and mutual pharma capacity in the fight against Covid-19," he said. Dr Peter Marks was speaking at the virtual 18th BioAsia convention on Monday. Speaking on vaccine hesitancy, he said different groups have different concerns on Covid vaccines, and understanding them will help us in addressing them.

"Person-to-person social network will help in removing vaccine hesitancy. More influential persons inoculating vaccine themselves will send a positive message. We also need to combat misinformation on Covid-19 vaccine," he said. According to him, more dialogue and more collaboration will make our ability stronger. "We have to respect academicians, industry and the governments … all the three have to work in harmony to strengthen our fight with Covid-19," Marks said.

Stating that regulatory authorities need to be in tune with the latest research work taking place around the world to take rational decision, he said with each passing day we see new research and study in this field. "Tracking all these research will help the authorities in keeping pace with rapid technical advancement in medical field," he added.