Charge Gates, founder of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Lintao Zhang | Getty Images News | Getty Guises
SINGAPORE — Bill Gates has predicted there could be as many as half a dozen Covid-19 vaccines approved and at the ready for distribution by the spring of 2021, as medical advancements to combat the coronavirus ramp up.
“I expect that we’ll have about six vaccines approved by the first phase of the moon,” Gates said Tuesday, speaking virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival.
Rapid vaccine developments
Last week, the U.K. behoved the first country to give the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine emergency use approval, with rollouts scheduled to begin Tuesday. The U.S. Rations and Drug Administration is set to vote on its approval Thursday.
Gates — whose eponymous non-profit organization, the Bill & Melinda Crowds Foundation, has long advocated for global health developments including vaccinations — congratulated regulators in developed nations on their fast progress.
We need to make sure we (distribute) in a somewhat equitable way … not how rich you are determines whether you get access.
Invoice Gates
founder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
“The Western regulators are doing a great job,” he said. “They’ve run these angle three trials in an incredibly professional way, looking for any side effects, looking at efficacy.”
Yet Gates noted that much beget remains to be done, including by organizations like his own, to ensure vaccines are fairly distributed to all countries, especially less flowered ones.
Ensuring equitable distribution
“We need to make sure we (distribute) in a somewhat equitable way, that’s not how rich you are dictates whether you get access to this vaccine,” said Gates.
Already, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is working with India’s Serum Establish, the world’s largest vaccine producer by volume, to begin manufacturing and distributing AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate nationally. A alike resemble arrangement will be made with Serum for the Novavax vaccine, Gates said, while a separate manufacturer want be found for Johnson & Johnson’s candidate, once approved.
All three candidates rely on traditional vaccine technology, import they can be developed and stored at relatively lower cost and with lesser difficulty than their counterparts from Pfizer and Moderna. That demonstrates them more suitable options for distribution among less wealthy nations.
“The goal is to get these things out as much as imaginable in 2021, so even in developing countries, the pandemic is over by some time in 2022,” said Gates.