BILL Gates is investing hundreds of millions into vaccine research in the hope of avoiding another disastrous pandemic.
The billionaire Microsoft founder has pledged $150 million (£110 million) to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), which will help fight Covid as well as any future pandemics.
The Gates Foundation tweeted: “In partnership with @wellcometrust, we’re each committing $150M to @CEPIvaccines to advance vaccine research and delivery.”
The tweet also contained a video of Gates in which he states: “To truly end Covid, and make sure we never have another disastrous pandemic, we need innovation, particularly innovation in vaccines.”
He’s urging governments to invest billions in making sure we don’t have another pandemic.
According to multiple reports, the tech genius has also warned that a future pandemic could have a worse fatality rate than Covid-19.
So far, Covid-19 has taken the lives of over five million people across the globe.
CEPI chief executive Richard Hatchett said the way Omicron has spread “over the past two months exemplifies the ways in which we must be ready, both in terms of speed and the scale of our response, to respond to future threats.”
Gates says governments in rich countries should make sure poorer countries can access vaccines too.
Some people claim Gates predicted the pandemic in a TED Talk in 2015.
The 66-year-old said: “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war – not missiles, but microbes.
“Part of the reason for this is we have invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents, but we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic.
“We’re not ready for the next epidemic.”
Gates used the 2014 Ebola outbreak as his example of an outbreak.
The Covid-19 pandemic then began around five years later.
In other news, China has built an ‘artificial moon’ to train its astronauts for future missions.
A huge asteroid was captured in eerie footage as it shot past Earth this week.
And, here’s why pilots think 5G could be ‘catastrophic’ for airplanes.
