Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who recently stepped down from the company’s board to dedicate his time towards philanthropic activities, has decided to spend billions of dollars in constructing factories that will manufacture 7 potential Coronavirus vaccines. Out of the 7 candidates, Gates would pick the best two for trials. Speaking on the American talk show The Daily Show, Gates told the show host Trevor Noah that “even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven just so we don’t waste time in serially saying ‘ok which vaccine works’ and then building the factory,” The Hill reported.
While this implies significant money being ‘wasted’ eventually but it is worth it for Gates. “It’ll be a few billion dollars we’ll waste on manufacturing for the constructs that don’t get picked because something else is better. But a few billion in this situation we’re in, where there’s trillions of dollars…being lost economically, it is worth it,” he said.
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Gates said testing and building the manufacturing capacity simultaneously is important to develop the medicine in the 18-month period. Stressing on the existing measures such as social distancing and stay at home to avoid Coronavirus, Gates said we’ll have a lot of unusual measures in place until “we get the world vaccinated.” “That’s a tall order, but it’s where we need to get to,” he added.
The philanthropist had urged the US government for a countrywide lockdown in an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that stricter lockdown measures are required in every state in the US. So far, over 3.11 lakh cases have been reported in the US — highest in the world while total deaths reported have been 8,454, according to statistics portal Worldometer.