Bill Gates says COVID will soon become a seasonal flu. updates.
Bill Gates says the omicron variant should build up a wealth of immunity for at least the next year, and annual doses of COVID-19 will likely be needed "for some time."
Gates wrote in a tweet during Qandah's Twitter with Devi Sridhar, Head of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, earlier this week.
Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said a "more transient variant" of Omicron is unlikely to emerge. But he acknowledged that COVID-19 presented many surprises during the pandemic.
The newly reported frequency of COVID-19 in the United States, driven by the omicron variant, continues to increase. The country recorded more than 5.5 million cases in the week ending Wednesday, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. Compared to the previous week, 47 states had an increase in cases, 38 had an increase in deaths, and 49 states had more COVID-19 patients in hospital beds. The country now has more than 152,000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, federal data show, and about 25,200 people are in intensive care beds.
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► Hospitalizations for COVID-19 in New Jersey increased by 28% since January 2, the number of people who need a fan rose to 500 on Monday - A 71% increase in this period .