Bill Gates: COVID-19 Drugs Need To Go Where Needed Instead Of To ‘The Highest Bidder’

Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, said Saturday that a future vaccine and drugs to treat COVID-19 need to go where they are needed the most, rather than just to ‘the highest bidder.’

During a COVID-19 conference, Bill Gates said, ‘If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed, we’ll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic. We need leaders to make these hard decisions about distributing based on equity, not just on market-driven factors.’

On July 6th, the WHO (World Health Organization) that there were 21 vaccine candidates that are in clinical trials. The trials are tests on human volunteers. ‘Vaccine Nationalism’ is a real public health concern, and several health experts have cautioned against it. The practice of Vaccine Nationalism is where countries fight against one another to get a vaccine first. Public health officials say that this would have dire consequences for both the global economy and public health.

$250 million dollars has been pledged by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help with COVID-19 research. The funds are meant ‘to support development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines… and help mitigate the social and economic impacts of the virus.’

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