VACCINE COULD BE READY IN A YEAR: GATES
PHILANTHROPIST FUNDING PRODUCTION OF 7 MOST PROMISING IDEAS
WASHINGTON: Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is funding production of the seven most promising ideas for a vaccine as he refocuses his work on the coronavirus.
“If everything went perfectly, we’d be in scale manufacturing within a year,” Gates said on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. “It could be as long as two years.”
The world’s second-richest man said vaccine production will probably not start in September, as some have said.
“Dr Anthony Fauci and I have been fairly consistent to say 18 months to create expectations that are not too high,” Gates said, referring to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force. Gates also warned that trying to rush a reopening of the economy and generating “exponential” growth in Covid-19 cases “will be seeding other parts of the country”, comparing it to the infection spreading via international travel in early 2020.