OREANDA-NEWS. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has predicted the end of the acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic in 2022, he wrote on the GatesNotes blog.

"I hope the end [of the pandemic] is in sight. It would be foolish to make another prediction, but I think the acute phase of the pandemic will end sometime in 2022,"- the businessman said.

Gates believes that in a couple of years, the level of risk due to the pandemic will be low enough that people will not have to factor it into their decisions.

According to the businessman, this year the world is closer to normal thanks to vaccination. He called it a miracle that during the first year of the pandemic more than one vaccine had been developed.

At the end of November, Gates made predictions about the end of the pandemic. At the time, he said morbidity and mortality from the coronavirus could be down to seasonal influenza levels by mid-2022. The businessman made the prediction with the caveat that it was only realistic if no more dangerous strains emerged in the world. Gates said in January that the next pandemic could be ten times worse than the one caused by the coronavirus.

In February, Hans Kluge, head of the World Health Organization's European office, suggested that the pandemic would end in early 2022. The virus will continue to spread but restrictions will no longer be necessary, he said. In October, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that humanity would soon be 60% of the way through COVID-19.