EXCLUSIVE: Indian vaccine manufacturers to play big role in fighting coronavirus, says ace S Korean Dr Jerome H Kim

South Korea, is one of the few countries, that has successfully managed to control the spread of coronavirus. In late January, South Korea was the part of a smaller group of countries that are severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. But, now when, major economies are struggling to contain the spread, South Korea has earned the praise of the World Health Organization as the daily infections reduced to 27 last week.

In an exclusive chat, WION spoke to Dr. Jerome H Kim, Director General of International Vaccine Institute, who also led the US military's research program on the HIV vaccine. He is the author of over 250 publications and has 11 patents under his name.

So here's all that he said on South Korea's coronavirus story and a host of other issues related to COVID-19.

On Friday, South Korea reported 91 coronavirus cases. So is there a possibility of a second wave?

Kim said that when we look at the new cases, it's two weeks in the past. He said that South Korea is reporting cases between 50-100 from a number of days and fewer than 50 cases from the past few days and "that's a promising trend".

"We have to realise that we will never get rid of it completely," he said.

Kim said that the problem with other countries who are struggling to deal with COVID-19 pandemic is that they were not able to begin this process to test, track, isolate and treat COVID-19 early enough as South Korea did.In Italy, the US, governments were a bit late to fully institute this policy and as a result, a rather larger number of symptomatic people got infected and were able to spread this virus to others, he said.

When asked whether India could adopt a model like that of South Korea, he said that India is a large country and it has "to start looking at the model of China", to take necessary measures to contain the spread.

When it comes to how India is responding to the outbreak, Kim said, "India is in early days".

He said in India, "reporting of tests back to the central government is going to be a critical place where information can be gathered and shared and clear, concise decisions can be made to the people of India".

"This is a part of South Korea's success and of other countries that have duplicated."

"Clear, concise messaging from a single source."

Can hydroxychloroquine be the drug to treat COVID-19?

Kim said, "if we do nothing, 98 per cent of people infected with COVID-19 recover", adding that the key element to test vaccines is in a manner that it gives us answers. He said a lot of vaccines that are being talked about have side-effects.

He also said that India has to play a "big role" in this fight against COVID-19. He stressed that nearly 70 per cent of vaccine used around the world for extended immunisation programmes is made in India. "Almost every child in the world has received a vaccine made in India," Kim said.

Kim said once the vaccine is discovered, Indian companies have to produce nearly a billion a year in order to meet the requirements of the world. He also said that India has great universities and talented people in IT sector and all these people can be brought in to do their part to tackle this pandemic.