The United States, and the global community, won’t really return to normal until mass immunizations are available against the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bill Gates, who with his wife, runs a charitable foundation which works against communicable disease.

Much of the United States, as well as most of the developed world, has been on extreme lockdowns and social distancing to try to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic.

This has kept many Americans out of restaurants, bars, theaters and many types of retail establishments–wherever crowds could gather.

There have been more than 1.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide. The virus has killed more than 69,000.

In the United States, there have been 338,999 cases reported, including 9,687 deaths, according to the most recent figures.

“It is fair to say things won’t go back to truly normal until we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world and so, the best people at the foundation were all about high-volume vaccines and are working with many manufacturers not only — but getting that billions of dose capacity,” said the former Microsoft chief. “And so like China, there will be a partial opening up, which some jobs will resume, school will resume, but will have to be very, very careful not to have the rebound until the vaccine comes.”

Public health professionals have said that it could be another year to 18 months before a safe and proven vaccine against COVID-19 could become available.

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