Bill Gates: covid-19 pandemic over by 2021
Global philanthropist and coronavirus vaccine funder Bill Gates thinks the COVID-19 pandemic won't be over until the end of 2021, even for the world's richest countries but millions of deaths are yet to come in poor countries.
The Charitarian is feeling optimistic that, with all the work being done to develop COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, there is an end to the pandemic in sight.
Unfortunately, that end is still at least a year away, he told Wired's Steven Levy.
"The innovation pipeline on scaling up diagnostics, on new therapeutics, on vaccines is actually quite impressive. And that makes me feel like, for the rich world, we should largely be able to end this thing by the end of 2021, and for the world at large by the end of 2022," Gates said.
Gates says that he fears that in nations like Russia and China, the pressure to have a vaccine is so high that regulators may be allowing shots to be given to humans before the vaccines are known to be safe and effective.