Photographer: Takaaki Iwabu / Bloomberg
Photographer: Takaaki Iwabu / Bloomberg
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Founder and billionaire philanthropist of Microsoft Corp., Microsoft G.
“You pay billions of dollars in this very unforgettable way to get the most worthless test results from any country in the world,” Gates said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on Sunday. “No other country has these testing madness.”
“A variety of early mistakes by the US and then the political sphere meant we did not pass our tests,” he said.
Gates cited long lines at commercial labs and delays in getting test results, which means “you pay as much for the late result as the temporary result.” Meanwhile, “very wealthy people have access to these reports for quick turnaround,” he said.
“It’s striking that you can not get the government to improve the tests because they just want to say how great it is,” Gates said.
Public officials have regularly cited suspicions in testing results in the U.S. as an obstacle to quick contact tracking and isolating people infected with the virus.
President Donald Trump has defended the American record on tests as “the best ever, the best in the world,” Fox News reported last week that half of testing the country is “short-term.”
Gates reiterates that he expects the US to come through the pandemic for the most part by the end of next year as a therapeutic and a vaccine available.
In a Bloomberg interview last week Gates said he funded efforts to develop vaccines through AstraZeneca Plc, Johnson & Johnson en Novavax Inc.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged more than $ 350 million to Covid-19 research. Much of that has gone to funding research and production capacity that will help spread a vaccine worldwide.
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