The meeting, held ahead of the Gavi Vaccine Alliance pledging session, focused on Ghana’s health sector interventions and ongoing reforms aimed at expanding access to quality care.

Sharing insights from the engagement, the President, in a Facebook post, disclosed that they covered key topics including the significant progress on the Free Primary Healthcare programme, the ongoing work of the National Vaccine Institute, and the impact of uncapping the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIS) to improve healthcare access and financing.

“These meetings underscore the importance of international collaboration and sustained investment in health systems to build a healthier future for all,” Mahama noted.

Mr. Mahama expressed gratitude to Mr. Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their continued philanthropic investment in Ghana, particularly through the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, which plays a critical role in immunisation efforts across low- and middle-income countries.

President Mahama reaffirmed his commitment to championing Gavi’s mission, stating, “Supporting an organisation that is doing such crucial work for global health is always a pleasure.”

The President will participate in the pledging session as an advocate for sustained and increased support for Gavi’s work. He will reinforce Ghana’s role as both a beneficiary and a global health advocate on the international stage.

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Gates said he would accelerate his giving via his foundation, with plans to end its operations in 2045.

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” he wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

Mr Gates, 69, said his eponymous foundation has already given $100bn (£75bn) towards health and development projects, and that he expects it will spend another $200bn, depending on markets and inflation, over the next two decades.

In his blog post, Mr Gates cited a 1889 essay by tycoon Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth, which argues that wealthy people have a duty to return their fortunes to society.

Mr Gates quoted Mr Carnegie, who wrote: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”

His latest pledge represents an acceleration in charitable giving. Initially, he and his ex-wife Melinda had planned for the Gates Foundation to continue working for several decades after their deaths.

When asked about this shift, Mr Gates told the BBC’s Newshour on Thursday that there will be other wealthy people in 20 years who can better tackle future challenges.

“It’s really about the urgency,” he said. “We can spend a lot more if we’re not trying to be perpetual, and I know that the spending will be in line with my values.”

Giving away 99% of his fortune could still leave Mr Gates a billionaire – according to Bloomberg, the Microsoft founder is the fifth-richest person in the world.

In the blog post, he shared a timeline of his wealth that showed his current net worth at $108bn and a large hand-drawn arrow going down to close to zero in 2045.

Mr Gates also said the foundation would draw from its endowment to give away $200bn.

Along with Paul Allen, Mr Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, and the company became a dominant force in computer software and other tech industries. Mr Gates has gradually stepped back from the company this century, resigning as chief executive in 2000 and as chairman in 2014.

He said he has been inspired to give away money by investor Warren Buffett and other philanthropists, however critics of his foundation say Mr Gates uses its charitable status to avoid tax and that it has undue influence over the global health system.

In his blog post, he outlined three main goals for his foundation: eliminating preventable diseases which kill mothers and children; eliminating infectious diseases including malaria and measles; and eliminating poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

Mr Gates criticised the US, UK and France for cutting their foreign aid budgets.

“It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people,” he wrote. “But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty.”

He was more pointed in the interview with Newshour, where he was asked about comments he had made accusing tech billionaire Elon Musk of killing children through cuts to US aid made by Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge.

“These cuts will kill not just children, but millions of children,” Mr Gates replied.

“You wouldn’t have expected the world’s richest person to do it.”

In his interview with the BBC’s Newshour, Mr Gates raised the issue of cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, which Donald Trump erroneously claimed was funding condoms “for Hamas” in the Gaza Strip. Mr Musk later acknowledged the claim was wrong and said “we will make mistakes”, however the cost-cutting continued.

“I’m disappointed that [Musk] made abrupt cuts and characterised them in a way that was unfair, including saying that, money was being spent in Gaza when in fact, it was money to prevent mothers from infecting their babies with HIV,” Mr Gates said.

“I mean, this is serious stuff,” he continued.

The BBC has contacted Mr Musk for comment.

The Gates Foundation is a donor to BBC Media Action, the BBC’s charitable arm which is separate from the Corporation’s news operations.

The 60-year-old philanthropist stunned Late Show host Stephen Colbert Monday night with her candid answer about the end of her 27-year marriage with the Microsoft founder.

Melinda, who famously split from Bill Gates in 2021, has recently stepped back into the spotlight to promote her new memoir, in which she candidly reflects on the major transitions in her life, including her high-profile divorce.

She explained to Colbert that her relationship with the father of her three children lacked trust and honesty, which forced her to leave.

‘I learned to have a trusted relationship, which is what I wanted in marriage, both partners have to be honest with one another,’ Melinda said.

‘And if you can’t, you can’t have intimacy and you can’t have trust. So in the end, I had to go.’

While she did not detail what caused the lack of trust in their marriage, Melinda has previously admitted that her ex-husband’s friendship with disgraced Jeffrey Epstein was a driving factor for their split.

Bill has refused to say whether he was unfaithful to Melinda, but previously admitted he ‘certainly made mistakes’ in their marriage and claimed to ‘take responsibility.’

She explained to Colbert that her relationship with the father of her three children lacked trust and honesty, which forced her to leave.

‘I learned to have a trusted relationship, which is what I wanted in marriage, both partners have to be honest with one another,’ Melinda said.

‘And if you can’t, you can’t have intimacy and you can’t have trust. So in the end, I had to go.’

While she did not detail what caused the lack of trust in their marriage, Melinda has previously admitted that her ex-husband’s friendship with disgraced Jeffrey Epstein was a driving factor for their split.

Bill has refused to say whether he was unfaithful to Melinda, but previously admitted he ‘certainly made mistakes’ in their marriage and claimed to ‘take responsibility.’

In an interview with The Times of London published on Saturday, Jan. 25, the former Microsoft exec, 69, opened up about his 2021 divorce from his wife of 27 years, revealing that one of his biggest goals in life was to replicate his own parents’ 45-year marriage.

“I encouraged Melinda to be a little calmer than my mother was, but we were both quite driven,” he told the outlet, reflecting on how he tried to make his own marriage reflect his parents’. “I spent more time with the kids than my dad did, but the ratio was still 10:1, with Melinda doing most things for the kids. We had a great time.”

Bill said he believes there is a “certain wonderfulness to spending your entire adult life with one person,” especially when you share children together, as well as fond memories and shared projects.

“When Melinda and I met, I was fairly successful but not ridiculously successful — that came during the time that we were together,” he told The Times of London. “So, she saw me through a lot. When we got divorced, it was tough and then she made the decision to leave the foundation — I was disappointed that she took the option to go off.”

The former couple first met in 1987, when Melinda became a product manager at Microsoft, and they eventually married in Hawaii in 1994. The pair founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — a nonprofit dedicated to combating global poverty and disease — in 2000. Following their split, Melinda, 60, resigned from the foundation in May 2024.

When asked if divorce was his only failure in life, Bill told The Times of London: “You would have to put that at the top of the list. There are others but none that matter.”

“The divorce thing was miserable for me and Melinda for at least two years,” he continued, adding elsewhere in the conversation that he has become “more cheerful” in the nearly four years since their split, but still considers it to be “the mistake I most regret.”

“Melinda and I still see each other — we have three kids and two grandchildren, so there are family events,” he said. “The kids are doing well. They have good values.”

The pair share three children: son Rory, 25, daughter Phoebe, 22, and daughter Jennifer, 28, as well as two grandchildren, Jennifer’s daughters Leila and Mia. Bill is now dating Paula Hurd, the widow of former Oracle executive Mark Hurd.

Melinda has also previously opened up about her split from Bill, telling Time last year that while their divorce was “hard” and “painful,” over time it eventually came with “wonderful” new opportunities.

“I live in a neighborhood. Now I can walk to little stores. I can walk to the drugstore, I can walk to a restaurant,” she told the outlet, speaking about her change of scenery after the split. “I absolutely love it.”

Melinda also revealed that the former couple had separated during the COVID-19 pandemic, trading off who was able to stay at their shared family home with their children.

“It gave us the privacy to do what needed to be done in private,” she told Time of their family life during the pandemic. “You know, I separated first before I made the full decision about a divorce. And to be able to do that in private while I’m still trying to take care of the kids, while still making certain decisions about how you’re going to disentangle your life — thank God.”

Mark Zuckerberg, Rihanna and Bill Gates are among the guests at the pre-wedding gala hosted by Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani for his son.

Anant Ambani, 28, is set to marry Radhika Merchant in July.

Bollywood stars including Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan are also at the three-day event in Jamnagar city.

Mukesh Ambani, 66, is currently the world’s 10th richest man with a net worth of $115bn, according to Forbes. Reliance Industries, founded by his father in 1966, is a massive conglomerate that operates in sectors ranging from refining and retail to financial services and telecom.

Anant Ambani is the youngest of his three children, all of whom are on the board of Reliance Industries. The 28-year-old is involved in Reliance’s energy businesses and is on the board of Reliance Foundation.

The extravagant pre-wedding event is in keeping with the Ambani family’s record of hosting lavish wedding parties.

In 2018, pop sensation Beyoncé performed at Mr Ambani’s daughter Isha Ambani’s pre-wedding festivities held in Udaipur city. Former US Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were among the guests at the event.

A Bloomberg report at the time cited sources who put the cost of Isha’s wedding at $100m – this was denied by a “person close to the family” who said the bill was around $15m.

The current festivities kicked off earlier this week with an event where the Ambani family served food to the local people in Jamnagar.

Some 1,200 guests are attending the pre-wedding party, which is being held in a township in Jamnagar near Reliance’s main oil refinery.

Reuters reported that the guest list includes Indian billionaires Gautam Adani and Kumar Mangalam Birla. Disney CEO Bob Iger is also expected to be at the party, which comes days after his company announced a merger of its India assets with that of Reliance.

Zuckerberg, who is on a busy Asia trip, reached Jamnagar on Thursday. Bill Gates, who arrived in India a couple of days ago, had earlier posted a video of himself having tea made by a local vendor – it later went viral.

Others spotted arriving on Friday include cricketers Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Dwayne Bravo, and BP CEO Murray Auchincloss.

Other guests expected at the Ambani event include BlackRock co-founder Larry Fink, Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai, former Canadian PM Stephen Harper, former Australian PM Kevin Rudd and Ivanka Trump.

“The guest list appears to have more RSVPs from global corporate titans than the weddings of Mr Ambani’s two older children in 2018 and 2019, underscoring Reliance’s growing clout and role as a conduit to the Indian economy for global tech, media and energy giants,” Bloomberg wrote.

Among the entertainment on offer are performances by Rihanna and illusionist David Blaine.

Guests are also expected to visit a rescue centre in Jamnagar, which is reportedly home to more than 2,000 animals. According to a planning document seen by Reuters, the dress code for this visit is “jungle fever”.

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Speaking at an event in Lagos State on June 21, Gates shared how excited Phoebe was about his trip to Nigeria and the opportunity to meet some of the country’s renowned music stars.

During his opening address, Gates mentioned that his daughter was particularly thrilled about the possibility of meeting Afrobeat artists Burna Boy and Rema.

He humorously admitted that he had to research their music because he wanted to stay “hip.”

The audience, comprised of young students and innovators, responded with laughter.

Gates fondly recalled his previous visit to Nigeria when he had the chance to witness performances by Davido and Wizkid, two prominent Nigerian musicians.

He expressed admiration for their talent and acknowledged the incredible creativity prevalent in Nigeria, specifically highlighting the global popularity of Nigerian Afrobeats.

The timing of Gates’ remarks coincided with an ongoing debate about the “new and old cats” in Nigeria’s music industry.

Davido had previously referred to himself and Wizkid as representatives of the older generation, while including Burna Boy among the new wave of artists, despite Burna Boy’s international recognition.

Gates’ statement about looking up Burna Boy further solidified Davido’s position as one of Nigeria’s top-selling musicians.

The debate surrounding the categorization of artists in the industry seemingly concluded with Gates’ submission, emphasizing Davido’s continued relevance and stature within Nigerian music.

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The Microsoft co-founder, 67, is dating Paula Hurd, widow of Mark Hurd, the CEO of software company Oracle and the one-time boss of Hewlett-Packard, who died in 2019.

“It’s widely known that Bill Gates and Paula Hurd are dating, but she hasn’t met his kids yet,” a source tells PEOPLE.

‘They’re inseparable,’ a friend of the couple tells DailyMail.com. 

Gates and Hurd, 60, were photographed together at the Australian Open last month, sitting side-by-side as they watched the Men’s Singles Final.

News of the relationship comes close to two years after Gates and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates announced they were divorcing after 27 years of marriage. Their divorce was finalized in August 2021.

Gates and French Gates, 58, share three children, daughters Jennifer, 26, and Phoebe, 20, and son Rory, 23. Jennifer is currently expecting her first child with husband Nayel Nassar and is “due any day,” the source adds.

Last month, Paula and Bill who were matched together when they were seen watching the Men’s Singles Final together at the Australian Open in Melbourne during a trip Down Under. 

The pair also traveled up to Sydney where the billionaire met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Gates and Hurd took the opportunity to take a romantic stroll around the city as they stopped to admire the panoramic views of the harbor and check out the famed Opera House.

Photos of the two taking in the sights were published at the time, but Hurd had not been identified. 

The billionaire philanthropists, who finalised their divorce in August 2021 after 27 years of marriage, have repeatedly spoken about their continued working relationship through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which they started in 2000. And this week, the pair showed a united front while attending the foundation’s 2022 Goalkeepers event.

The annual gathering, which celebrates leaders who are working to advance sustainable global goals, was held in person in New York City on Tuesday and Wednesday after a two-year hiatus.

Just one day before the start of the annual event, Melinda shared that she remained “completely committed” to working alongside her ex-husband.

“We met for the first time with our board of trustees last week in person,” Melinda, 58, said during an interview with Bloomberg. “What I think they would all tell you is that Bill and Melinda remain completely committed to this institution and to working effectively together. And that’s what we’re doing today.”

The Microsoft co-founder, 66, and the global advocate for women and girls both attended the Goalkeepers 2022 Global Goals Awards, posing for photos with a number of world leaders — including the four winners: Radhika Batra, co-founder of the nonprofit organisation Every Infant Matters; Zahra Joya, a journalist whose self-funded news agency covers issues affecting women in Afghanistan; Vanessa Nakate, a climate justice activist; and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

It came as the Microsoft co-founder announced he would make a $20bn (£17bn) donation to his philanthropic fund.

The world’s fourth richest man said he had an “obligation” to return his resources to society.

Mr Gates first pledged to give away his wealth in 2010 but his net worth has more than doubled since then.

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He is currently worth $118bn, according to Forbes magazine, but that will fall significantly after his donation in July to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charitable fund he set up with his ex-wife in 2000.

Although the foundation bears our names, basically half our resources have come from Warren Buffett. His incredible generosity is a huge reason why the foundation has been able to be so ambitious. I can never adequately express how much I appreciate his friendship and guidance. pic.twitter.com/at7MvJKxQv

— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 13, 2022

In a Twitter thread, Mr Gates said the foundation would boost its spending from $6bn a year to $9bn by 2026 due to recent “global setbacks” including the pandemic, Ukraine and the climate crisis.

“As I look to the future, I plan to give virtually all of my wealth to the foundation,” he said. “I will move down and eventually off of the list of the world’s richest people.

“I have an obligation to return my resources to society in ways that have the greatest impact for reducing suffering and improving lives. And I hope others in positions of great wealth and privilege will step up in this moment too.”

The Gates Foundation works in countries to eradicate diseases such as Malaria, improve education and tackle poor sanitation. It was thought to be the world’s second largest charitable foundation in 2020, holding $49.8bn in assets and is backed by other wealthy benefactors such as the billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Although the foundation has done good work, some have raised concerns about the ethics of a private endeavour wielding such great influence.

The foundation is the largest private donor to the World Health Organization, second only to the US with its annual donation in 2018. Concerns about this became more pointed after former President Donald Trump threatened to pull US funding.

Mr Gates held Forbes’ title of the richest person in the world between 1995 and 2010, and again from 2013 to 2017.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos knocked him off the top spot in 2017 before Tesla chief executive Elon Musk took pole position in 2022.

The 66-year-old tech giant wrote in a tweet Tuesday that he is experiencing mild symptoms and is “following the experts’ advice” by isolating himself until he’s healthy.

“I’m fortunate to be vaccinated and boosted and have access to testing and great medical care,” Gates tweeted.

In a tweet, Gates said the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation planned to meet Tuesday for the first time in two years. Gates says he will join via Microsoft Teams as he thanks the foundation for its hard work.

“We will continue working with partners and do all we can to ensure none of us have to deal with a pandemic again,” Gates tweeted.

In 2015, Gates gave a TED talk about global pandemics, warning us that the world was not prepared to handle one.

“There’s no need to panic … but we need to get going,” Gates said during his talk.

In a conversation with NPR’s Ari Shapiro in 2020, Gates spoke about the coronavirus response, giving the U.S. high marks for its social distancing efforts but low marks for testing.

“Imagine that the diagnostics had been available in a month and the therapeutics in four months and the vaccine in less than a year,” Gates told NPR. “When you have something that grows exponentially, the speed of those responses makes all the difference.”

The billionaire philanthropist admitted that everyone has “low moments” and she is “not happy every day” in an interview with USA Today published Sunday, adding that divorce wasn’t something she “ever thought would happen” to her.

“It certainly wasn’t what I thought on the day I got married,” she said. “But I realized for myself, I needed to make a healthier choice, and that was just a very, very sad day.”

Gates, 66, and French Gates, 57, announced their split in May 2021.

“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” the former couple said in a joint statement at the time.

“We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.”

Their divorce was finalized in August 2021.

French Gates recently revealed how her ex-husband’s friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein played a role in her decision to end the marriage.

However, French Gates clarified that was not the only reason for the demise of the marriage, adding that it was “not one thing but many things.”

Gates allegedly had an affair with a Microsoft employee, which the company’s board became aware of in 2019.

“I certainly believe in forgiveness, so I thought we had worked through some of that,” French Gates also told King, 67. “It wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened. There just came a point in time where there was enough there where I realized it just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”

The former couple, who started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation together, share daughters Jennifer, 25, and Phoebe, 19, and son Rory, 22.

The billionaire founder of Microsoft warned that world leaders must prepare for disasters like ‘smallpox terror attacks’ whatever the cost, and called for the formation of a new billion-dollar World Health Organisation Pandemic Task Force.

He gave the warning and bid for funds during a Policy Exchange think tank interview with chair of the Health Select Committee and former UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday. 

While the research may be expensive, he said that it could also lead to other innovations, such as eradicating flu and the common cold.

He said that countries like the US and the UK must spend ‘tens of billions’ to fund the research.

“I’m hoping in five years, I can write a book called, “We are ready for the next pandemic’, but it’ll take tens of billions in R&D – the US and the UK will be part of that,” he said.

‘It’ll take probably about a billion a year for a pandemic Task Force at the WHO level, which is doing the surveillance and actually doing what I call ‘germ games’ where you practise.’

Gates suggested that the ‘germ-games’ could include preparing for acts of bioterrorism such as smallpox attacks on airports, likening them to ‘war-games’ used by militaries to train for conflicts the world over.

Despite the dire warning, the world’s fourth richest man also struck an optimistic note during the interview, anticipating the ‘incredibly beneficial’ medical innovations that will come from increased funding for pandemic prevention.

“The nice thing is a lot of the R&D we need to do to be ready for the next pandemic are things like making vaccines cheap, having big factories, eradicating the flu, getting rid of the common cold, making vaccines just a little patch you put on your arm, things that will be incredibly beneficial even in the years when we don’t have pandemics,” he said.

He added that he will continue to talk about pandemic preparedness, as part of his work as a philanthropist.

Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the Journal reported Sunday that a Microsoft engineer had “alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship over years with Mr Gates.

“During the probe, some board members decided it was no longer suitable for Mr Gates to sit as a director at the software company he started and led for decades,” the Journal reported. “Mr Gates resigned before the board’s investigation was completed.”

The employee was not named in the Journal’s article. CNN has not confirmed the allegations cited by the Journal.

“Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to CNN Business late Sunday. A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm, to conduct a thorough investigation.

Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.”In a statement to the Journal, a spokesperson for Gates said, “There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably. Bill’s decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter.

In fact, he had expressed an interest in spending more time on his philanthropy starting several years earlier.”The spokesperson also pointed to a March 2020 statement regarding his decision to resign from the board.The WSJ’s story was published soon after a separate New York Times article that reported Gates had “developed a reputation for questionable conduct in work-related settings.

“The Times reported, citing “people with direct knowledge with overtures,” that “on at least a few occasions, Mr. Gates pursued women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”The Times did not cite the names of the people involved.Gates’ spokesperson told the Times that, “It is extremely disappointing that there have been so many untruths published about the cause, the circumstances and the timeline of Bill Gates’ divorce.

“The spokesperson said that the “claim of mistreatment of employees is also false,” and that “the rumors and speculation surrounding Gates’ divorce are becoming increasingly absurd and it’s unfortunate that people who have little to no knowledge of the situation are being characterized as ‘sources.’

“CNN has not confirmed the allegations cited by the Times. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.Earlier this month, Melinda Gates — Bill Gates’ wife and co-founder of their foundation — filed for divorce.

In a statement announcing their split, the couple said, “after a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage.

“Bill Gates is one of the richest people in the world. His net worth was $144 billion as of today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranking.”

The electric car company’s value has risen following the announcement that it would join the S&P 500 index and is currently valued at $521.49 (£390.20) a share.

Mr Musk, 49, is now worth more than $128 billion (£95bn) as he owns 20% of all of the company’s shares, which have risen by more than 675% since 25 November last year, when they were valued at $67.27 (£50.33) each

The limelight-friendly billionaire started this year in 37th position on the rich list. Last week he overtook Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in the third position.

The deposition of Bill Gates, who is also worth $128bn, marks only the second time the Microsoft founder has dropped out of the top two on the Bloomberg billionaires index, although Mr Gates could conceivably be ranked higher if he did not persistently donate billions of his personal wealth to charity.

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Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos remains at the top of the Bloomberg rich list, with an estimated net worth of $182bn (£136bn).

Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world by share price, with a market value of just over $494bn (£370bn).

It produces fewer vehicles than all of its major rivals, with just 500,000 expected this year. Toyota has an annual production of 10 million.

Mr Musk and Mr Gates have recently distinguished themselves by their reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Mr Gates’ foundation committing $36bn to ramp up the manufacturing and distribution of future vaccines.

In contrast, Mr Musk claimed to have taken four tests on the same day, two of which showed he was positive for the virus, and two that came back negative, as he stated: “something extremely bogus is going on”.

It is not the first time the outspoken billionaire has expressed scepticism about the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this year, he described lockdowns as “forcibly imprisoning people in their homes” and “fascist”.

Reports indicate he passed in his home on Tuesday, September 15, 2020, with his family by his side.

Though the cause of death is not clear, Mr Gates announced his demise on social media and penned an emotional tribute in his honour.

He has also taken to his blog, gatesnotes.com to eulogise the 94-year-old man in a lengthy article, stating his health had been declining.

Describing him as the real Bill Gates, the former acknowledged the crucial roles the deceased played in his life and that of his sisters while growing up.

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To him, he wouldn’t have made it in life without his dad, stating he will miss him every day.

Meanwhile, tributes have started pouring in for the departed.

The Veep held a zoom meeting with the former world’s richest, which was joined by Deputy Minister for Health, Dr Oko-Boye.

The meeting was segmented in three folds; first discussed Ghana’s progress on immunization against the new circulating vaccine-derived polio virus type 2 (cVDPV2).

The discussion follows a nationwide campaign to vaccinate children under five years against the polio virus as part of efforts to responding to the outbreak.

The exercise which targeted 4.6 million children commenced September 10 and is expected to be completed by October 11.

With Bill Gates leading a foundation against polio eradication, the Ghanaian leaders thought it wise to borrow tips.

The next discussion Dr Bawumia held with Bill Gates bordered around Ghana’s The lessons from Ghana’s policy response to COVID-19.

Ghana, especially President Akufo-Addo has made his mark on the global front through series of Covid-19 addressed, of which some key statements have been adopted worldwide.

The last area of interest to both parties was Ghana’s digitization strategy. Bawumia, in his brief revealed Bill Gates congratulated Ghana for the strides she has made on several fronts.

The move, which has been described as the greatest hack of all time also targeted former U.S. president Barack Obama, billionaire investor Warren Buffet, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Rapper Kanye West and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as well as the official accounts of both iPhone-maker Apple and ride-share app Uber were also compromised.

The official account for Twitter itself was not spared.

Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden was among the accounts hijacked by attackers. The message posted to Biden’s official Twitter account was deleted minutes after it was sent, however.

The compromised Twitter accounts, including some high-profile bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry accounts, posted similar messages within minutes of each other early Wednesday evening inviting Twitter users to claim high-value rewards.

It’s unclear how the hackers gained access to the accounts, some of which are known to use two-factor authentication.

“We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly,” Twitter posted. The company’s share price has dropped in after hours trading, down around 4%.

Shortly after posting its statement, Twitter appears to have disabled all verified accounts from tweeting, saying: “You may be unable to Tweet or reset your password while we review and address this incident.”

“I’m surprised Twitter hasn’t gone completely dark to prevent misinformation campaigns and political upheaval,” Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of cybersecurity firm SocialProof Security, told NBC News, adding: “We are lucky the attackers are going after bitcoin (money motivated) and not motivated by chaos and destruction.”

“We have partnered with CryptoForHealth and are giving back 5,000 BTC,” one of the hacked Twitter accounts posted along with a link to a scam website.

Donations to one bitcoin address used by the scammers, which can be seen here, have now passed $100,000.

The accounts of major bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Gemini were affected, as well as blockchain news outlet Coindesk.

“All major crypto Twitter accounts have been compromised,” Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss said via Twitter.

Some of the posts were deleted after being sent, however, some accounts that were used by attackers have continued to post links to the scam.

Despite the negative connotations of the high-profile scam, some in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency community aren’t worried.

“Any regulatory action in response to the hack is likely to focus on Twitter, rather than on bitcoin,” Cory Klippsten, tech investor and founder of bitcoin buying app Swan Bitcoin, said via Telegram, adding he’s expecting this event to result in an influx of new bitcoin users.

“At this early stage in bitcoin’s rise, almost all news is good news. A lot of people who’ve never given it a thought are going to be reading about bitcoin over the next few weeks, and wondering why the scammers chose it as the vehicle to pull off their scam.”

This style of bitcoin giveaway scam, promising high-value returns for a small donation, has been around for some time.

Fraudsters have used the names and likeness of celebrities and high-profile people from U.S. president Donald Trump to singer Katy Perry to con unsuspecting internet users out of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

Last year, an investigation by the U.K.’s Which? magazine found those who have fallen victim of one particular bitcoin scam reported individual losses of up to $250,000.

Campaigners have lobbied for social media and internet giants to clamp down on such scams and both Twitter and rival social media giant Facebook have recently taken steps to fight fake news on their platforms.

“I could see some sort of change in policy against bitcoin or crypto giveaways, with similar posts being automatically flagged or removed,” said Klippsten.

The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.

“Everyone is asking me to give back,” a tweet from Mr Gates’ account said. “You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”

Twitter said it was a “co-ordinated” attack targeting its employees “with access to internal systems and tools”.

“We know they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf,” the company said in a series of tweets.

It added that “significant steps” were taken to limit access to such internal systems and tools while the company’s investigation was ongoing.

Meanwhile, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeted: “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.”

One cyber-security expert said that the breach could have been a lot worse in other circumstances.

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“If you were to have this kind of incident take place in the middle of a crisis, where Twitter was being used to either communicate de-escalatory language or critical information to the public, and suddenly it’s putting out the wrong messages from several verified status accounts – that could be seriously destabilising,” Dr Alexi Drew from King’s College London told the BBC.

Emergency response

Twitter earlier had to take the extraordinary step of stopping many verified accounts marked with blue ticks from tweeting altogether.

Password reset requests were also being denied and some other “account functions” disabled.

By 20:30 EDT (00:30 GMT Thursday) users with verified account started to be able to send tweets again, but Twitter said it was still working on a fix.

Dmitri Alperovitch, who co-founded cyber-security company CrowdStrike, told Reuters news agency: “This appears to be the worst hack of a major social media platform yet.”

On the official account of Mr Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief appeared to offer to double any Bitcoin payment sent to the address of his digital wallet “for the next 30 minutes”.

“I’m feeling generous because of Covid-19,” the tweet added, along with a Bitcoin link address.

The tweets were deleted just minutes after they were first posted.

But as the first such tweet from Musk’s account was removed, another one appeared, then a third.

Others targeted included:

• the rapper Kanye West
• reality TV star Kim Kardashian West
• former US President Obama
• former US Vice-President Joe Biden, who is the current Democratic presidential candidate
• media billionaire Mike Bloomberg
• the ride-sharing app Uber
• the iPhone-maker Apple

The Biden campaign said Twitter had “locked down the account within a few minutes of the breach and removed the related tweet”.

A spokesman for Bill Gates told AP news agency: “This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing.”

Instagram message

The BBC can report from a security source that a web address – cryptoforhealth.com – to which some hacked tweets directed users was registered by a cyber-attacker using the email address mkeyworth5@gmail.com.

The name “Anthony Elias” was used to register the website, but may be a pseudonym – it appears to be a play on “an alias”.

Cryptoforhealth is also a registered user name on Instagram, apparently set up contemporaneously to the hack.

The description of the profile read “It was us”, alongside a slightly smiling face emoticon.

The Instagram profile also posted a message that said: “It was a charity attack. Your money will find its way to the right place.”

In any case, the real identities of the perpetrators are as yet unknown.

An unprecedented ‘smash and grab’

These “double your Bitcoin” scams have been a persistent pest on Twitter for years but this is unprecedented with the actual accounts of public figures hijacked and on a large scale.

The fact that so many different users have been compromised at the same time implies that this is a problem with Twitter’s platform itself.

Early suggestions are that someone has managed to get hold of some sort of administration privileges and bypassed the passwords of pretty much any account they want.

With so much power at their fingertips the attackers could have done a lot more damage with more sophisticated tweets that could have harmed an individual or organisation’s reputation.

But the motive seems to be clear – make as much money as quickly as they can. The hackers would have known that the tweets wouldn’t stay up for long so this was the equivalent of a “smash and grab” operation.

There are conflicting accounts of how much money the hackers have made and even when a figure is settled upon, it’s important to remember that cyber-criminals are known to add their own funds into their Bitcoin wallets to make the scam seem more legitimate.

Either way, it’s going to be very hard to catch the criminals by following the money. Law enforcement, as well as many angry users, will have some strong questions for Twitter about how this could have happened.

Cameron Winklevoss, who was declared the world’s first Bitcoin billionaire in 2017 along with his twin brother Tyler, tweeted a message on Wednesday warning people not to participate in the “scam”.

In the short time it was online, the link displayed in the tweets of targeted accounts received hundreds of contributions totalling more than $100,000 (£80,000), according to publicly available blockchain records.

The Twitter accounts targeted have millions of followers.

Last year, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey’s account was hacked, but the company said it had fixed the flaw that left his account vulnerable.

Dr Drew recently co-authored a paper warning about the potential of Twitter being used to sow disinformation.

She said the latest incident highlighted the need for all major social media platforms to check their security measures, particularly in the run up to the US Presidential vote.

“Social media companies such as Twitter and, Facebook all have a duty to consider the damage and influence their platforms can have on the 2020 election, and I think some companies are taking that more seriously than others,” she told the BBC.

“Twitter actually has a good history of being forward-thinking and proactive in this space.

“But whatever the source of this attack [it seems they have] still not done enough.”

The FBI’s San Francisco field office put out a statement on Wednesday about the latest cyber-breach.

“The accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud,” it said.

“We advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident.”

The publication, which features social media comments, also claims that President Akufo-Addo has committed Ghana to a mandatory vaccination programme.

Some of the comments include those shared here and here.

Fact-checkGhana.com looked into these claims and found them to be completely false.

Explanation: There is yet to be a vaccine against COVID-19 in the world although the World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified a number of possible vaccines.

Ghana, like other countries of the world affected by COVID-19, is supporting various initiatives geared towards finding a safe and effective vaccine.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a major funder of the WHO has been a victim of misinformation and conspiracy theories such as the foundation planning to use a future COVID-19 vaccine to implant microchips in billions of people and to depopulate Africa.

These conspiracies have, among other things, been fuelled by Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ push for a COVID-19 vaccine.

The claim that President Akufo-Addo has committed Ghana to a Bill Gates vaccine pact to receive a COVID-19 vaccine for compulsory vaccination of citizens is based on a tweet by the president, via his twitter handle, @NAkufoAddo on May 15, 2020.

“Together with other global leaders, I signed the @UNAIDS Public Letter on a People’s Vaccine for # COVID19. It is important that all people everywhere must have access to the vaccine when one becomes available. It must be the #PeoplesVaccine,” the tweet read.

To verify the claim, we visited the UNAIDS official website to get details about the said letter [described as a pact by the claimants] and find out if it was in any way connected to Bill Gates and was associated with a compulsory vaccination programme.

A blog post on the UNAIDS website indicated that the people’s vaccine against COVID-19 is only an open letter signed by over 140 world leaders including current and former president and experts.

The pact demands all governments of the world to ensure that whenever any effective vaccine or treatment for COVID-19 is developed, it should be patent-free, mass-produced, distributed fairly and made available to all people, in all countries, free of charge.

The Executive Director for UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima, explained in a video that “epidemics affect everyone but they do not affect everyone equally.

“To fight COVID we have to fight inequality because pandemics feed on and widen inequalities…Together, we want all leaders to guarantee that when a safe and effective vaccine is developed, it is produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people in all countries free of charge.

“The same applies to all treatments, tests and other technologies. No one should be sent to the back of the COVID queue because of the colour of their skin or the money in their pockets.”

She further justified the calls for a people’s vaccine, citing the instance of African countries unable to buy COVID-19 test kits and Personal Protective Equipment from the open markets because rich countries buy them in huge quantities and stocking up for themselves.

There are currently over 100 candidate vaccines under various stages of development. According to the WHO, 10 are currently in clinical evaluation stage while 115 are in the pre-clinical evaluation stage.

Bill Gates in an April 2, 2020 interview on Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would later fund factories of seven COVID-19 vaccine candidates however, the People’s Vaccine letter does not make specific reference to any vaccine and therefore it cannot be said that Ghana has signed up for a Bill Gates COVID-19 vaccine.

Again, to the extent that the People’s Vaccine letter does not put citizens of any of the countries whose presidents have signed, like Ghana, under any agreement to be mandatorily quarantined, the claim suggesting so is false.

There is currently no law in Ghana that permits compulsory vaccination of citizens against COVID-19.

My answer is always the same: when we have an almost perfect drug to treat COVID-19, or when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus.

The former is unlikely to happen anytime soon. We’d need a miracle treatment that is at least 95 percent effective to stop the outbreak. Most of the drug candidates right now are nowhere near that powerful. They could save a lot of lives, but they aren’t enough to get us back to normal.

Which leaves us with a vaccine

Humankind has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for coronavirus. Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine. We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible.

That sounds daunting, because it is. Our foundation is the biggest funder of vaccines in the world, and this effort dwarfs anything we’ve ever worked on before. It’s going to require a global cooperative effort like the world has never seen. But I know it’ll get done. There’s simply no alternative.

Here’s what you need to know about the race to create a COVID-19 vaccine:

The world is creating this vaccine on a historically fast timeline.

Dr Anthony Fauci has said he thinks it’ll take around 18 months to develop a coronavirus vaccine. I agree with him, though it could be as little as nine months or as long as two years.

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Although 18 months might sound like a long time, this would be the fastest scientists have created a new vaccine. Development usually takes around five years. Once you pick a disease to target, you have to create the vaccine and test it on animals. Then you begin testing for safety and efficacy in humans.

Safety and efficacy are the two most important goals for every vaccine. Safety is exactly what it sounds like: is the vaccine safe to give to people? Some minor side effects (like a mild fever or injection site pain) can be acceptable, but you don’t want to inoculate people with something that makes them sick.

Efficacy measures how well the vaccine protects you from getting sick. Although you’d ideally want a vaccine to have 100 percent efficacy, many don’t. For example, this year’s flu vaccine is around 45 percent effective.

To test for safety and efficacy, every vaccine goes through three phases of trials:

• Phase one is the safety trial. A small group of healthy volunteers gets the vaccine candidate. You try out different dosages to create the strongest immune response at the lowest effective dose without serious side effects.
• Once you’ve settled on a formula, you move onto phase two, which tells you how well the vaccine works in the people who are intended to get it. This time, hundreds of people get the vaccine. This cohort should include people of different ages and health statuses.
• Then, in phase three, you give it to thousands of people. This is usually the longest phase, because it occurs in what’s called “natural disease conditions.” You introduce it to a large group of people who are likely already at the risk of infection by the target pathogen, and then wait and see if the vaccine reduces how many people get sick.

After the vaccine passes all three trial phases, you start building the factories to manufacture it, and it gets submitted to the WHO and various government agencies for approval.

This process works well for most vaccines, but the normal development timeline isn’t good enough right now. Every day we can cut from this process will make a huge difference to the world in terms of saving lives and reducing trillions of dollars in economic damage.

So, to speed up the process, vaccine developers are compressing the timeline. This graphic shows how:

In the traditional process, the steps are sequential to address key questions and unknowns. This can help mitigate financial risk, since creating a new vaccine is expensive. Many candidates fail, which is why companies wait to invest in the next step until they know the previous step was successful.

For COVID-19, financing development is not an issue. Governments and other organizations (including our foundation and an amazing alliance called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) have made it clear they will support whatever it takes to find a vaccine. So, scientists are able to save time by doing several of the development steps at once. For example, the private sector, governments, and our foundation are going to start identifying facilities to manufacture different potential vaccines. If some of those facilities end up going unused, that’s okay. It’s a small price to pay for getting ahead on production.

Fortunately, compressing the trial timeline isn’t the only way to take a process that usually takes five years and get it done in 18 months. Another way we’re going to do that is by testing lots of different approaches at the same time.

There are dozens of candidates in the pipeline.

As of April 9, there are 115 different COVID-19 vaccine candidates in the development pipeline. I think that eight to ten of those look particularly promising. (Our foundation is going to keep an eye on all the others to see if we missed any that have some positive characteristics, though.)

The most promising candidates take a variety of approaches to protecting the body against COVID-19. To understand what exactly that means, it’s helpful to remember how the human immune system works.

When a disease pathogen gets into your system, your immune system responds by producing antibodies. These antibodies attach themselves to substances called antigens on the surface of the microbe, which sends a signal to your body to attack. Your immune system keeps a record of every microbe it has ever defeated, so that it can quickly recognize and destroy invaders before they make you ill.

Vaccines circumvent this whole process by teaching your body how to defeat a pathogen without ever getting sick. The two most common types—and the ones you’re probably most familiar with—are inactivated and livevaccines. Inactivated vaccines contain pathogens that have been killed. Live vaccines, on the other hand, are made of living pathogens that have been weakened (or “attenuated”). They’re highly effective but more prone to side effects than their inactivated counterparts.

Inactivated and live vaccines are what we consider “traditional” approaches. There are a number of COVID-19 vaccine candidates of both types, and for good reason: they’re well-established. We know how to test and manufacture them.

The downside is that they’re time-consuming to make. There’s a ton of material in each dose of a vaccine. Most of that material is biological, which means you have to grow it. That takes time, unfortunately.

That’s why I’m particularly excited by two new approaches that some of the candidates are taking: RNA and DNA vaccines. If one of these new approaches pans out, we’ll likely be able to get vaccines out to the whole world much faster. (For the sake of simplicity, I’m only going to explain RNA vaccines. DNA vaccines are similar, just with a different type of genetic material and method of administration.)

Our foundation—both through our own funding and through CEPI—has been supporting the development of an RNA vaccine platform for nearly a decade. We were planning to use it to make vaccines for diseases that affect the poor like malaria, but now it’s looking like one of the most promising options for COVID. The first candidate to start human trials was an RNA vaccine created by a company called Moderna.

Here’s how an RNA vaccine works: rather than injecting a pathogen’s antigen into your body, you instead give the body the genetic code needed to produce that antigen itself. When the antigens appear on the outside of your cells, your immune system attacks them—and learns how to defeat future intruders in the process. You essentially turn your body into its own vaccine manufacturing unit.

Because RNA vaccines let your body do most of the work, they don’t require much material. That makes them much faster to manufacture. There’s a catch, though: we don’t know for sure yet if RNA is a viable platform for vaccines. Since COVID would be the first RNA vaccine out of the gate, we have to prove both that the platform itself works and that it creates immunity. It’s a bit like building your computer system and your first piece of software at the same time.

Even if an RNA vaccine continues to show promise, we still must continue pursuing the other options. We don’t know yet what the COVID-19 vaccine will look like. Until we do, we have to go full steam ahead on as many approaches as possible.

It might not be a perfect vaccine yet—and that’s okay.

The smallpox vaccine is the only vaccine that’s wiped an entire disease off the face of the earth, but it’s also pretty brutal to receive. It left a scar on the arm of anyone who got it. One out of every three people had side effects bad enough to keep them home from school or work. A small—but not insignificant—number developed more serious reactions.

The smallpox vaccine was far from perfect, but it got the job done. The COVID-19 vaccine might be similar.

If we were designing the perfect vaccine, we’d want it to be completely safe and 100 percent effective. It should be a single dose that gives you lifelong protection, and it should be easy to store and transport. I hope the COVID-19 vaccine has all of those qualities, but given the timeline we’re on, it may not.

The two priorities, as I mentioned earlier, are safety and efficacy. Since we might not have time to do multi-year studies, we will have to conduct robust phase 1 safety trials and make sure we have good real-world evidence that the vaccine is completely safe to use.

We have a bit more wiggle room with efficacy. I suspect a vaccine that is at least 70 percent effective will be enough to stop the outbreak. A 60 percent effective vaccine is useable, but we might still see some localized outbreaks. Anything under 60 percent is unlikely to create enough herd immunity to stop the virus.

The big challenge will be making sure the vaccine works well in older people. The older you are, the less effective vaccines are. Your immune system—like the rest of your body—ages and is slower to recognize and attack invaders. That’s a big issue for a COVID-19 vaccine, since older people are the most vulnerable. We need to make sure they’re protected.

The shingles vaccine—which is also targeted to older people—combats this by amping up the strength of the vaccine. It’s possible we do something similar for COVID, although it might come with more side effects. Health authorities could also ask people over a certain age to get an additional dose.

Beyond safety and efficacy, there are a couple other factors to consider:

• How many doses will it be? A vaccine you only get once is easier and quicker to deliver. But we may need a multi-dose vaccine to get enough efficacy.
• How long does it last? Ideally, the vaccine will give you long-lasting protection. But we might end up with one that only stops you from getting sick for a couple months (like the seasonal flu vaccine, which protects you for about six months). If that happens, the short-term vaccine might be used while we work on a more durable one.
• How do you store it? Many common vaccines are kept at 4 degrees C. That’s around the temperature of your average refrigerator, so storage and transportation is easy. But RNA vaccines need to be stored at much colder temperature—as low as -80 degrees C—which will make reaching certain parts of the world more difficult.

My hope is that the vaccine we have 18 months from now is as close to “perfect” as possible. Even if it isn’t, we will continue working to improve it. After that happens, I suspect the COVID-19 vaccine will become part of the routine newborn immunization schedule.

Once we have a vaccine, though, we still have huge problems to solve. That’s because…

We need to manufacture and distribute at least 7 billion doses of the vaccine.

In order to stop the pandemic, we need to make the vaccine available to almost every person on the planet. We’ve never delivered something to every corner of the world before. And, as I mentioned earlier, vaccines are particularly difficult to make and store.

There’s a lot we can’t figure out about manufacturing and distributing the vaccine until we know what exactly we’re working with. For example, will we be able to use existing vaccine factories to make the COVID-19 vaccine?

What we can do now is build different kinds of vaccine factories to prepare. Each vaccine type requires a different kind of factory. We need to be ready with facilities that can make each type, so that we can start manufacturing the final vaccine (or vaccines) as soon as we can. This will cost billions of dollars. Governments need to quickly find a mechanism for making the funding for this available. Our foundation is currently working with CEPI, the WHO, and governments to figure out the financing.

Part of those discussions center on who will get the vaccine when. The reality is that not everyone will be able to get the vaccine at the same time. It’ll take months—or even years—to create 7 billion doses (or possibly 14 billion, if it’s a multi-dose vaccine), and we should start distributing them as soon as the first batch is ready to go.

Most people agree that health workers should get the vaccine first. But who gets it next? Older people? Teachers? Workers in essential jobs?

I think that low-income countries should be some of the first to receive it, because people will be at a much higher risk of dying in those places. COVID-19 will spread much quicker in poor countries because measures like physical distancing are harder to enact. More people have poor underlying health that makes them more vulnerable to complications, and weak health systems will make it harder for them to receive the care they need. Getting the vaccine out in low-income countries could save millions of lives. The good news is we already have an organization with expertise about how to do this in Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

With most vaccines, manufacturers sign a deal with the country where their factories are located, so that country gets first crack at the vaccines. It’s unclear if that’s what will happen here. I hope we find a way to get it out on an equitable basis to the whole world. The WHO and national health authorities will need to develop a distribution plan once we have a better understanding of what we’re working with.

Eventually, though, we’re going to scale this thing up so that the vaccine is available to everyone. And then, we’ll be able to get back to normal—and to hopefully make decisions that prevent us from being in this situation ever again.

It might be a bit hard to see right now, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re doing the right things to get a vaccine as quickly as possible. In the meantime, I urge you to continue following the guidelines set by your local authorities. Our ability to get through this outbreak will depend on everyone doing their part to keep each other safe.

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The global population is estimated to be over seven billion, which means Bill Gates is hoping to have potential vaccines produced with his Foundation’s funding to reach the entire global population.

He however told US comedy/news programme The Daily Show that “Seven billion people, that’s a tall order, but it is where we need to get to.”

Bill Gates Foundation is currently funding the construction of factories for seven coronavirus vaccine candidates.

He said that move means wasting billions of dollars but worth it to save the world economy.

Gates said: “It’ll be a few billion dollars we’ll waste on manufacturing for the constructs that don’t get picked because something else is better.

“But a few billion in this situation we’re in, where there’s trillions of dollars – a thousand times more – trillions of dollars being lost economically, it is worth it.

“Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven, just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying, ‘OK, which vaccine works? and then building the factory,” he said.

Gates providing enough funding for a vaccine

Gates told host of the show Trevor Noah, that “because our foundation has such deep expertise in infectious diseases, we’ve thought about the epidemic, we did fund some things to be more prepared, like a vaccine effort.”

“We can save months, and every month counts,” @BillGates and Trevor discuss combating coronavirus tonight at 11/10c pic.twitter.com/fYijnZa6tF— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 3, 2020

On another programme on CNBC, Gates said with the risks associated with producing a vaccine for the entire global population and the potential side effects for certain groups of people, indemnification would be useful at some point.

Gates and his wife, Melinda have already pledged $100 million toward fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Wow. Bill Gates talks about creating a vaccine with low side effects so it can be given to 7 billion people. He says he wants to use his vaccine to vaccinate the entire population.

He also says he’ll need indemnification to be protected from all lawsuits.https://t.co/TJov8k1DHg

— Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) April 12, 2020

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has in the past funded some vaccines for Polio and Tuberculosis.

On its website the foundation said “Our Global Health Division aims to reduce inequities in health by developing new tools and strategies to reduce the burden of infectious disease and the leading causes of child mortality in developing countries.”

Scientists around the world are still racing to produce a vaccine that can help fight the deadly coronavirus.

The wife of the world billionaire, Bill Gates, in an interview with CNN, expressed worry over the continent’s inability to handle the COVID-19 pandemic should the disease reach its peak on the continent as has been the case in Europe, Asia and North America.

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Speaking further in the interview, Melinda Gates asserted that it’s likely to see dead bodies fill the streets of the continent when the pandemic reaches its peak on the continent.

But taking to social media, some Africans rejected her prediction for the continent with others taking a swipe at her.  

Read reactions below:

“My people for Africa,” he began, “how una dey?”

Gates went on to answer questions from Nigerians on what his foundation – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – is doing to help with poverty and insurgency.

See the video below