How important is India’s role in the vaccine development activity as the COVID battle takes off globally?

If the global anti COVID vaccine story has to succeed, then India needs to play a pivotal role. The reasons are not far to seek because India accounts for 60% of all the vaccines produced in the world today and remain the largest player by far. Secondly, more than 70% of all vaccines procured by WHO are also produced in India, underlining its importance.

As vaccines roll out and scale will be the big change, all eyes will be actually focused on India, because India alone has the capacity to ramp up its manufacturing capacity at a very rapid pace and to that level that is required to handle a crisis and distribution challenge of this magnitude. In short, India has to be the pivot of this battle.

India has shown its mettle in this space keeping the world adequately supplied with drugs to fight COVID like the HCQ and paracetamol. India currently supplies drugs to more than 150 countries across the world. India is the centre of attention to manufacture and supply vaccines in massive volumes to tackle the impact of the pandemic.

India has the capacity to manufacture billions of doses of vaccines but what is also required is the ability to manage the backward and forward logistics of the vaccine procurement and distribution to the world. That is an area where India will need a massive support from the local logistics companies and from international best practices.