Bill Gates coronavirus vaccine could be ready in a year

According to the Financial Times, billionaire Bill Gates’s foundation will concentrate all of its resources on fighting the coronavirus.

The philanthropist and founder of Microsoft Corp. said that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with a donation exceeding $40 billion, will give “total attention” to the pandemic that has hit more than 200,000 and is disturbing economies around the world, he said in an interview.

Gates said, “You’re going to have economies with greatly reduced activity levels for years.”  The pandemic could cost the global economy “tens of trillions of dollars,” he added.

The foundation has contributed $250 million to help counter the coronavirus and is re-purposing units dedicated to fighting other diseases to join in the fight against the pandemic.

“We’ve taken an organization that was focused on HIV and malaria and polio eradication, and almost entirely shifted it to work on this,” he told.

Gates also supported the World Health Organization against allegations from U.S. President Donald Trump that the body had mishandled the virus response.

According to Gates, “WHO is clearly very, very important and should actually get extra support to perform their role during this epidemic.”  He said he doesn’t believe Trump will follow through on his warning to withdraw funding for the WHO.