Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said in an interview with Sky News he is hopeful the world will be "completely back to normal" by the end of 2022, as more COVID-19 vaccines become available, Fox Business reported Tuesday.

According to the Microsoft co-founder and former top executive, wealthier countries like the U.S. and the U.K. "will get to high levels of vaccination" by the summer, which will "free up" more doses to countries that need the vaccines the most.

Gates also insisted preparing for future pandemics was a major priority and expressed concern it would be forgotten about as what happened in the wake of the Ebola outbreak.

The 65-year-old businessman also said "it's not fair" that the U.S. and Britain are already conducting massive immunization programs for the 30-year-old population, while nations like Brazil and South Africa haven't yet managed to vaccinate people over the age of 30.

Gates has been very vocal about how the world should unite to contain the virus since it began last March. "We will not have eradicated this virus, but we'll be able to bring it down to very small numbers by the end of 2022," he said during the Sunday interview.

The American business magnate has long underscored the importance of distributing COVID-19 vaccines to the entire world and has pledged millions of dollars over the past year to help in vaccination campaigns through his non-profit Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

New cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. were down 16% last week to around 409,000, the largest percentage drop in weekly new infections since February, a Reuters analysis of state and county data shows.

Meanwhile, the world's COVID-19 cases remain at an all-time high even as some wealthy nations report fewer and fewer of them, according to Business Insider, citing a World Health Organization data.