Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has cautioned the world’s leaders not to lose sight of the continued threat of the ongoing pandemic and future variants. “We’re still at risk of this pandemic generating a variant that would be even more transmissive and even more fatal,” he told the Financial Times. “It’s not likely, I don’t want to be a voice of doom and gloom, but it’s way above a 5 per cent risk that this pandemic, we haven’t even seen the worst of it.”

Gates, who first warned the public in 2015 that global infrastructures were grossly unprepared to handle the next pandemic, is again calling for more concerted investment in future prevention. “It seems wild to me that we could fail to look at this tragedy and not, on behalf of the citizens of the world, make these investments,” Gates said, laying out his plan for a “Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization” initiative that would encompass governments, epidemiologists and computer modelers, and be managed by the World Health Organization.