Bill Gates willing to spend billions to speed up the hunt for coronavirus vaccine

Bill Gates has said he is willing to spend billions to speed up the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine.

The Microsoft founder has already devoted millions of pounds to help fight the disease, but is now looking at ways he can help further.

And he’s looking at funding everything from drugs for symptoms to research on a cure.

There’s money for seven vaccine makers to allow them to build factories and another £16million available to three initiatives in the US and UK studying the effectiveness of existing drugs in treating coronavirus.

And he’s not stopping there – saying he’s willing to put billions behind the efforts of doctors and scientists.

“The only thing that really lets us go back completely to normal and feel good about sitting in stadiums with lots of other people is to create a vaccine and not just take care of our country but take that vaccine out to the global population,” Gates said on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

The money will be channelled through the charity he runs with his wife – The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Back in February, before any lockdowns in the west came into force, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $10million to help fight the virus.

As time has passed, he’s devoted more and more cash to the cause.

“Our early money can accelerate things,” Gates said.

“Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven [labs looking into vaccines].

“[It’s] so that we don’t waste time in serially saying which vaccine works and then building the factory.”

But despite it all, he was hopeful for the future.

“So this is super, super bad, but we will eventually get a vaccine. Even before then, if we do the right things we’ll be able to open up significant parts of the economy,” Gates told Fox News

“I’m sure you know, once we get past this, we’ll look back, understand what we could have done differently, and make sure that we’re not letting it happen again, particularly because it could be even worse in terms of the fatality rate.”