Former Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has set out to lend a hand to Americans to alleviate the shortcomings of the US healthcare system.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) , the foundation that he and his wife run, has announced that it will provide home tests for the citizens of Seattle (the largest city in the state of Washington and probably the most affected by the already recognized pandemic) can check if they are infected with coronavirus.
Those with symptoms associated with COVID-19 can be tested in their own homes . They simply must rub their nose and return the sample for its corresponding analysis.
As reported by local newspaper The Seattle Times, the results are shared with local health officials in as little as two days. They will be in charge of notifying those citizens who have tested positive.
By being able to perform the tests at home , the need for those potentially affected by the coronavirus to travel to medical centers or hospitals is reduced, which reduces the possible exposure to other people.
At the moment the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have not given a date for the launch of the project , but it is expected that this will not take too long. The organization also estimates that the units will run out quickly.
The Gates Foundation has a long history fighting diseases and epidemics around the world. To date they have invested $ 100 million to fight the pandemic, with $ 5 million of this amount going to Seattle.
In a statement, Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, stressed that ” the COVID-19 epidemic reminds us that infectious diseases do not respect limits and that no community is immune from the threat of a global pandemic.” However, he clarifies that “however, we can take steps to mitigate its impact in Seattle and around the world. And we are ready to support these efforts here in our community of origin ”.
Gates warned of a possible pandemic in 2015
Bill Gates himself had already predicted a few years ago that a situation like the coronavirus crisis could occur in the world. In a TED talk given in 2015, the businessman predicted that a virus could produce a global catastrophe and said that this should concern us more than a possible nuclear accident.
“Huge amounts have been invested in nuclear deterrents. But instead, very little has been invested in systems to stop epidemics. We are not prepared for the next epidemic ”, assured Gates. “We don’t need to panic, but we do need to get going.”
” Hundreds of thousands of workers are needed for a great epidemic … Lack of preparation could make the next epidemic much more devastating than Ebola,” the philanthropist projected. However, for Gates not everything was negative. He claimed that we had smartphones and satellites to be able to share information quickly and many advances in biology to “make medicine and vaccines that attack those germs.”
