Bill Gates is feeling optimistic about coronavirus vaccine development. The first two vaccine candidates likely to receive FDA authorization, one from Pfizer and one from Moderna, appear to be 95 percent effective against the virus. But the Microsoft co-founder and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also has high hopes for vaccines that haven’t yet made big headlines, with enthusiasm for those developed by AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax.
“Almost all the vaccines will work and with very high efficacy levels,” Gates told Bioreports’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview on Sunday. “I’m optimistic that by February it’s very likely that they’ll all prove very efficacious and safe.”
But the world isn’t out of the woods just yet.
“We should be very worried about the next six months,” Gates said, adding that he thinks the daily death rate from the virus will top 2,000 for much of the winter. He also discussed issues with testing and vaccine distribution, but thinks those challenges will be met.
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“In a slightly imperfect way, I do think the logistics will get solved,” Gates said. “Over time, we will get to that 70 percent-plus level that we need in order to stop the spread of the disease.”
Gates says his own Thanksgiving dinner will be small and he’ll set up a video connection with family members who aren’t present. He urged Americans to wear masks and social distance as we continue to wait for a vaccine.
“You know,” he said, “try not to have your family be the last death in this pandemic because you’re willing to see it through until the spring, which is when the vaccine will really start to cut the numbers down.”
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