Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates remains optimistic that a vaccine for covid will be developed soon and the coronavirus will end “for the world at large by the end of 2022.”
“You have to admit there’s been trillions of dollars of economic damage done and a lot of debts, but the innovation pipeline on scaling up diagnostics, on new therapeutics, on vaccines is actually quite impressive,” he said in an interview to Wired.
“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.”
The Gates Foundation has been working towards increasing access to immunization in poor countries.
In India, Pune-based Serum Institute of India last week said it would receive $150 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the GAVI vaccines alliance to make 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for India and other emerging economies as early as 2021.
The candidate vaccines, including those from AstraZeneca and Novavax, will be priced at $3 per dose and will be made available in 92 countries in GAVI’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker said in a statement.
The Gates Foundation will provide the funds to GAVI, which will be used to support Serum Institute.
GAVI, which backed by the Gates Foundation, co-leads COVAX – a scheme designed to guarantee fast and equitable access globally to COVID-19 vaccines – along with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
COVAX aims to deliver 2 billion doses of approved and effective COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021. (With Reuters Inputs)