Gates Package — page 9

PANDEMIC I - THE FIRST MODERN PANDEMIC − WHAT SYMPTOMS INDICATE YOU SHOULD GET TESTED? Some countries are taking the temperature of lots of people as an initial screening tool. If doing this helps us find more potential cases, we could use it at airports and large gatherings. We need to target the tests we have at the people at greatest risk since we don't have enough tests for everyone. − WHICH ACTIVITIES CAUSE THE MOST RISK OF INFECTION? People ask me questions about avoiding prepared food or door knobs or public toilets so they can minimize their risk. I wish I knew what to tell them. Judgments will have to be made about different kinds of gatherings like classes or church going and whether some kind of spacing should be required. In places without good sanitation, there may be spread from fecal contamination since people who are infected shed the virus. − WHO IS MOST SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE DISEASE? We know that older people are at much greater risk of both severe illness and death. Understanding how gender, race, and comorbidities affect this is a work in progress. The Gates Foundation's role In normal times, the Gates Foundation puts more than half of its resources into reducing deaths from infectious diseases. These diseases are the reason why a child in a poor country is 20 times more likely to die before the age of five than one in a rich country. We invest in inventing new treatments and vaccines for these diseases and making sure they get delivered to everyone who needs them. The diseases include HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, polio, and pneumonia. Whenever there is an epidemic like Ebola, SARS, or Zika we work with governments and the private sector to help model the risks and to help galvanize resources to create new tools to stop the epidemic. It was because of these experiences that I spoke out about the world not being ready for a respiratory epidemic in my 2015 TED talk. Although not enough was done, a few steps were taken to prepare, including the creation of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation, which I will discuss below, in the vaccine section. Now that the epidemic has hit, we are applying our expertise to finding the best ideas in each area and making sure they move ahead at full speed. There are many efforts going on. More than 100 groups are doing work on treatments and another 100 on vaccines. We are funding a subset of these but tracking all of them closely. It is key to look at each project to see not only its chance of working but also the odds that it can be scaled up to help the entire world. One urgent activity is to raise money for developing new tools. I think of this as the billions we need to spend so we can save trillions. Every additional month that it takes to get the vaccine is a month when the economy cannot return to normal. However, it isn't clear how countries will come together to coordinate the funding. Some could go directly to the private sector but demand that their citizens get priority. There is a lot of discussion among governments, the World Health Organization, the private sector, and our foundation about how to organize these efforts.