Normalcy will return only with second generation of Covid-19 vaccine: Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said life will only be back to normal once a second generation of Covid-19 vaccine becomes available.

Gates told NBC that normalcy can return “when we have, not the first generation of vaccines, but one that is super-effective”. 

He said the second generation vaccine should also be widely available, adding only then "all the problems created by Covid-19 can be solved".

Gates’ comments come in the wake of the global race for a coronavirus vaccine.

Earlier in April, Gates said the world will need a year or two to overcome the ravages of the pandemic. 

The first coronavirus vaccine was registered on August 11 -- Sputnik V, made in Russia.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) believes that a vaccine will be ready for registration by the end of 2020 or early next year at the earliest.

Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO chief scientist, said on Monday: "As you know, we have about 40 vaccine candidates now in some stage of clinical trials, and 10 of them are in the phase three trials, which are the late-stage clinical trials, which will tell us about both the efficacy and the safety. So, the best we could make a guess or predict, looking at when a trial started and when it is likely to have enough data to submit to the regulators, is [at] earliest from December of 2020 into the early part of 2021."

Countries have been developing dozens of vaccines since the start of the outbreak earlier this year, but none have passed the WHO-approved phase 3 trials so far. 

Many vaccines are expected to be registered with the WHO by the end of the year.

To date, more than 37 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 1.07 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.

(with inputs)