Bill Gates has told Sky News he remains hopeful the world will be "completely back to normal" by the end of 2022, as excess COVID-19 vaccines become available.
Speaking to Sophy Ridge On Sunday, the Microsoft tycoon and philanthropist pointed to the high rollout rate of coronavirus jabs in richer countries including the US and UK, helping free up doses to share with other countries. While he did not expect COVID-19 to be stamped out by next year, he expected the number of cases to be able to be cut to "very small numbers" by the end of 2022.
The 65-year-old also insisted preparing for future pandemics was "a top priority" and was worried it would be forgotten about as it was in the wake of the Ebola outbreak. But he added: "I do think because trillions were lost, that this generation will remember this." But the 65-year-old said he was worried the world would not learn the lessons of the COVID pandemic to prepare for future global disease outbreaks.
He was also critical of the cuts which have been made to the UK's aid budget, which has fallen from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%. Asked by Sky's Jayne Secker if he was hopeful the world would be "completely back to normal" by the end of 2022, Mr Gates said: "Yes, I am."
He went on: "There are still some questions about how broadly the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will get used, if that's accepted it would be very beneficial but some of the rich countries including the US and the UK, even this summer will get to high vaccination levels and that'll free up so that we're getting vaccines out to the entire world in late 2021 and through 2022 and so, we won't have eradicated this disease but we'll be able to bring it down to very small numbers by the end of 2022."
Mr Gates, who made his billions with technology company Microsoft, said there was inequality in vaccination rates around the world. He said: "We don't have world government that sits there and ignores the US research & development money or UK R&D money and overrides that.
