Bill Gates: "The Next Pandemic Will Be More Contagious and Deadly... We Must Prepare Now"

"Invest 1.25 Trillion Won Annually to Form Global Pandemic Prevention Team"
"All Countries Must Find Testing Methods to Detect Outbreaks Within 7 Days"

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft who predicted the pandemic situation before the global COVID-19 outbreak, emphasized that the next pandemic could be more contagious and deadly, and we must prepare for it now.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Jung-wan] Microsoft founder Bill Gates has predicted that the next pandemic could be more contagious and deadly, emphasizing the need to prepare now.

On the 26th (local time), the UK’s The Times reported that in his upcoming book next month, How to Prevent Next Pandemic, Bill Gates argued that we must prepare for the next pandemic now, while we still remember how deadly the COVID-19 crisis was, before epidemic prevention is pushed to the back burner.

Gates said the outbreak of COVID-19 was not due to a lack of smart people, but because the environment to fully utilize technology was not in place. He proposed investing $1 billion annually (about 1.25 trillion KRW) to establish a global pandemic prevention team. This organization would require about 3,000 full-time staff in fields such as epidemiology, genetics, drug and vaccine development, and would need to build information-sharing systems for surveillance, alerts, suppression support, and confirmed case scale, as well as provide policy recommendations and standardize training.

He compared a pandemic to a fire that starts in one building and spreads to every country in the world within weeks, saying that we need a group of experts like a global fire department.

The annual operating cost of $1 billion is less than one-thousandth of the world’s annual defense spending, and considering that another pandemic would cost trillions of dollars, he emphasized that this is not expensive.

As a second measure, Gates said that every country in the world should be able to detect outbreaks within seven days. He added that each country should find ways to test large numbers of people in a short period.

He also said people need to be helped to protect themselves by wearing masks and staying home when sick. He stated that better and easier-to-use vaccines should be developed alongside treatments, and large-scale simulation exercises should be conducted to prepare for pandemics.

Along with this, he stressed the need to continue efforts to eradicate infectious diseases in poor countries, explaining that the tools used to respond to COVID-19 actually exist because the world has invested in improving health in poor countries over time. Laboratories related to diseases like polio in South Africa and Nigeria quickly shifted their focus during the COVID-19 crisis. He added that the Beta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 were first identified in South African laboratories.

Finally, Gates said that each country must establish national measures for pandemic prevention.