Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates, has said that life may return to normal in the next eighteen months if everything goes perfectly well following the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) across the world.
According to Gates, the Coronavirus pandemic across the globe is unprecedented and is proving very tough, but a vaccine will bring the ordeal to an end.
“We want to get back to the life we had before Coronavirus,” Gates told BBC Breakfast.
“People see the economic destruction and psychological stress. This is such an unprecedented, very tough thing to deal with.
“The people like myself and Tony Fauci [Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] are saying 18 months.
“If everything went perfectly, we could do slightly better than that, but there will be a trade-off.
“We will have less safety testing than we would typically have and so governments will have to decide if they will indemnify the companies and say, ‘let’s go out with this’ when we don’t have the time to do what we usually do. 18 months is what we would expect.’”
He added: “We will look back and wish we had invested more so that we could quickly have all the diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines.
“I do think now because this has been so dramatic, that we weren’t ready for this pandemic, but I do think we will be ready for the next pandemic using the new tools of science that are very, very do-able.”
Gates had urged world leaders, especially members of the G-20 to provide more funds which will help in developing a vaccine that can curb the spread of COVID-19.