Microsoft co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Bill Gates has said that the coronavirus pandemic is the "biggest event that people will experience in their entire lives," and warned that a viral outbreak will likely happen "every 20 years or so," Business Insider says.

Gates has discussed the global fight against Covid-19 with the Financial Times via Skype.

He said the outbreak has affected the rich countries.

"This is the biggest event that people will experience in their entire lives. We will have standby diagnostics. We will have deep antiviral libraries. We will have antibodies scale up. We will have vaccine platforms. We will have early warning systems. We will do germ games," Gates said.

"The cost of doing all those things well is very small compared to what we're going through here," he said. "And so now people realize, 'OK, there really is a meaningful probability every 20 years or so with lots of world travel that one of these [viruses] will come along.' And so the citizens expect the government to make it a priority."

Gates revealed earlier that he will simultaneously fund the development of seven different coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines to discover a fix as quickly as possible — even if it wastes billions of dollars.