Bill Gates Believes That The COVID-19 Outbreak Is Coming To An End

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (Twitter @Billgates)

JAKARTA - Bill Gates' philanthropy predicts that a vaccine from the COVID-19 disease outbreak will be available in the next 18 months. Where currently various organizations are conducting research to find the world's first corona virus vaccine.

Quoting from Business Insider, he raised this in the question and answer session 'Asking Me Everything' on the Reddit community forum. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also one of the donors and supporters of the Pandemic Innovation Preparation Coalition which provides financial assistance to researchers to find a corona vaccine.

"The first vaccine we get will be given to health workers and critical workers. This could happen before 18 months if all goes well," Gates said as followed by VOI, Friday, March 21.

Gates' prediction is in line with estimates by the Head of Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci, who told reporters that the process of finding a vaccine will take 12 to 18 months.

"We and Anthony Fauci and others are careful not to promise this when we are not sure. The work is going at full speed," said the Microsoft boss.

There have been at least six experimental attempts to make a COVID-19 vaccine that have been carried out. However, the drug cannot be mass produced because it still requires a series of medical tests before it is distributed to the general population.

Gates also revealed that his organization has embraced drug companies such as Moderna and CureVac, to develop medical kits for COVID-19 prevention measures. One of them is by developing messenger RNA techniques.

"Some are using a new approach called Ribonucleic acid (RNA). We have to build a lot of manufacturers for different approaches knowing that some of them will pay off," said Gates.

Thanks @reddit for joining me yesterday to discuss the # COVID19 pandemic and what we can do to prevent the next one. Here's a recap of the conversation: https://t.co/RUtVlxIst0 pic.twitter.com/QUFZMteGlO

- Bill Gates (@BillGates) March 19, 2020

"We will need billions of vaccines to protect the world. Vaccines need testing to make sure they are safe and effective," added Gates.

On the other hand, Gates is quite concerned that the economic and government impacts will be worse during the COVID-19 outbreak. Especially in developing countries that do not immediately carry out social distancing and prevent various ways to suppress the contamination of the corona virus to humans.

Previously, Gates through his foundation had promised to donate 125 million US dollars to help fight the corona. However, Gates advised everyone to stay calm in the face of this outbreak.