Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has called for Covid-19 drugs and an eventual vaccine to be made available to countries and people that need them most, not to the “highest bidder,” saying relying on market forces would prolong the deadly pandemic.

“If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed, we’ll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic,” Gates, a founder of Microsoft, said in a video released during a virtual Covid-19 conference organised by the International AIDS Society.

“We need leaders to make these hard decisions about distributing based on equity, not just on market-driven factors,” Reuters quoted him as saying.