HYDERABAD: Even as the world is battling Covid-19, there are 40,000
unknown viruses in the world and what we are seeing in the form of
Coronavirus is just a sample, Hyderabad-based vaccine maker
Bharat Biotech’s chairman and managing director Krishna Ella said.
“About 40,000 unknown viruses are existing right now and only 10,000 can hop in from animal to animal to human or animal to human to animal. What we are seeing today is a sample... it is because our economies are affected, Covid-19 got more attention,” Ella said while addressing participants virtually at the ISB Deccan Dialogue on Monday.
To tackle these issues, Ella pointed out that the external affairs ministry can start with appointing epidemiologists in our neighbouring countries so that India can collaborate on such diseases early on.
Meanwhile, Rahul Chhabra, secretary, economic relations, ministry of external affairs, said that until now countries only thought of military threats to security but now ‘health security’ too has come to fore.
“Nobody is safe until all of us are safe. Health security was not a main table agenda in international discussions, but post the pandemic it has become the top agenda now,” he said. He also added that while Indian vaccine players will have the opportunity to cater to the global markets, holding clinical trials in each and every market will be a challenging task.
Prof M Vidyasagar of IIT-Hyderabad, who was also the chairman of the committee that built a model to predict the progression of Covid-19 in India, said the biggest challenge in the coming days could be that the winters could exacerbate the spread of the pandemic.
He added that if India is able to tackle it, it would be the first country to do so as other countries have been grappling with a rise in the number of Covid-19 patients with the onset of winter.