COVID will be less severe than flu next year according to Bill Gates

COVID will be less severe than flu next year according to Bill Gates.

Bill Gates believes COVID rates will drop lower than the seasonal flu by the summer of 2022.

MICROSOFT co-founder and noted philanthropist Bill Gates believes that COVID-19 will become less severe than seasonal flu by the summer of 2022.

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in a virtual interview on Thursday, November 18, Gates said that: “Between natural immunity, vaccine immunity, and these oral treatments that can scale up [the immunity] in the way the antibodies never did, the death rate and the severe disease rates ought to be coming down pretty dramatically.

“And by next summer getting to be quite a bit lower than the average seasonal flu level is, assuming there are no surprise variants”.

Gates, who stated that the “vaccines are very good news”, believes that the emergence of new strains now is unlikely due to “pretty impressive” data linked to the vaccine rollout, although it can not be ruled out completely.

Addressing the need for vaccines to be delivered to poorer countries, the 66-year-old billionaire said: “The supply constraints will be largely solved as we get out in the middle of next year and so will be limited by the logistics and the demand”. 

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the development of vaccines and virus surveillance, calling for a global response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the forum, Mr Gates also stated that “the world should do more work to eradicate the flu”.

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