Asian countries need to speed up their vaccine rollouts and production, Zhou Xiaochuan, China's former central bank governor, said on Thursday.

Speaking at Nikkei's Future of Asia online conference, Zhou called on Asian countries to accelerate treatment of patients and work with the international community to provide help to countries where the epidemic has not been effectively controlled.

Even though Asian countries have started to recover from the pandemic quicker than other places in the world, their vaccination rates are still lower than those of Europe and the U.S., he noted.

Zhou, who now serves as vice chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia, also said accelerating digital and green transformations could help Asia sustain its recovery.