Gates Foundation calls for global cooperation on vaccine for 7 billion people

The wealthy Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation called Wednesday for global cooperation to ready COVID-19 vaccines for seven billion people, while offering $150 million toward developing therapeutics and treatments for the virus.

While it is likely to take as many as 18 months to develop and fully test a safe coronavirus vaccine, global authorities and businesses need to start now on plans to manufacture it, said foundation chief executive Mark Suzman.

"It's normal to have, at maximum, hundreds of millions of doses manufactured," he said.

"When you are dealing with a novel pathogen like COVID-19, as and when we get to identifying a successful vaccine, we are going to need billions of doses." "There are seven billion people on the planet," he said. "We are going to need to vaccinate nearly every one. There is no manufacturing capacity to do that."
"The vast majority of vaccine candidates fail in those larger trials, the so-called phase-three trials." - 'Fastest vaccine ever' -