Bill Gates says the coronavirus is a pandemic and a 'once-in-a-century pathogen.' Here are the solutions he's proposing to fight it.

In a new op-ed, he outlines potential solutions for the coronavirus outbreak that has spread to at least 56 countries.
Gates referred to the outbreak as a pandemic, though the World Health Organization has so far shied away from declaring it to be a pandemic.
The coronavirus, Gates wrote, is behaving like a "once-in-a-century pathogen."
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Bill Gates has warned for years that the world is not ready for a deadly pandemic.

Some of his ominous predictions are now playing out as the deadly coronavirus spreads around the globe. The virus causes a disease known as COVID-19, which has killed almost 2,900 people and infected more than 83,000 others globally since December.

"In the past week, COVID-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we've been worried about," Gates wrote in a new op-ed for the New England Journal of Medicine. "I hope it's not that bad, but we should should assume it will be until we know otherwise."

Gates referred to the outbreak as a pandemic, even though the World Health Organization has not yet declared it a pandemic . The group has said instead that the virus has "pandemic potential."

"In any crisis, leaders have two equally important responsibilities: solve the immediate problem and keep it from happening again," Gates wrote. "The COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point. We need to save lives."

In the op-ed, Gates suggested the following list of solutions that could help slow the virus' spread:

Wealthy countries should supply low- and middle-income countries in Africa and southern Asia with trained healthcare workers to monitor the virus' spread and deliver vaccines.
Establish an international database where countries can share information.
Develop a system that screens for compounds that have already been safety-tested to use in a potential vaccine.
Governments and donors should fund manufacturing facilities that can pump out vaccines within weeks.

Gates predicted that large-scale trials for a coronavirus vaccine could happen as early as June. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health's infectious-disease center, recently said that he hopes to start testing vaccine candidates in people by mid-April.

However, drug development is typically a multiyear process that can cost roughly $1 billion in the US. Gates said making vaccines affordable for everyone is the "right strategy" for containing the coronavirus outbreak.

"Given the economic pain that an epidemic can impose we're already seeing how COVID-19 can disrupt supply chains and stock markets, not to mention people's lives it will be a bargain," he wrote.

On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declined to promise that a future coronavirus vaccine would be affordable for all Americans. But he backtracked day later, saying that any vaccine developed in conjunction with the US government would need to be financially accessible to the public .

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already contributed $100 million toward the fight to contain the outbreak. In his op-ed, Gates said warding off a pandemic will require billions of dollars.

He added that there is no time to waste.

Although China has seen a drop-off in its rate of new cases in recent days, the coronavirus has spread to at least 55 other countries. At least 72 people have died outside of mainland China.

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