The “acute phase” of the Covid-19 pandemic will end in 2022, billionaire Microsoft founder and vaccine enthusiast Bill Gates has predicted on his blog, also deeming the rise of the Omicron variant “concerning.”

Axar.az reports that “It might be foolish to make another prediction, but I think the acute phase of the pandemic will come to a close sometime in 2022,” the billionaire suggested in a post to his GatesNotes blog.

Pharmaceutical companies have historically had trouble selling the flu shot to populations due to its comparatively low effectiveness rate, which is largely due to scientists having to guess what strain of influenza will be most prevalent in any given year.

The tech mogul acknowledged that despite the rollout and mass uptake of Covid-19 vaccines around the world, more people had died with the virus in 2021 than in 2020, adding that the improvement in the pandemic situation this year had not been as “dramatic” as he’d hoped.