Bill Gates says the chances of catching a severe infection from COVID-19 are dramatically lower but he believes another pandemic is likely

• Bill Gates believes the risk of catching a severe COVID-19 infection has "dramatically reduced."
• In an interview with CNBC, he also said he believed another pandemic would occur.

Bill Gates has voiced his opinions on COVID-19 and future pandemics in a new interview.

Speaking to CNBC at Germany's annual Munich Security Conference on Friday, he said the danger of experiencing severe disease from COVID-19 has "dramatically reduced."

"The chance of severe disease, which is mainly associated with being elderly and having obesity or diabetes, those risks are now dramatically reduced because of that infection exposure," he said.

He added, however, that he believes the world will see another pandemic.

"We'll have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen next time," Gates said, per CNBC.

But the Microsoft cofounder said he thought that if there was a rational response then "we'll catch it early" and it "won't go global like it did this time."

In terms of whether it is possible to prevent another pandemic altogether, Gates told CNBC's Hadley Gamble: "If every country did what Australia did, then you wouldn't be calling it a pandemic."

Gates has become a prominent figure in the fight against COVID-19 by pledging billions to response efforts.

Before COVID-19 emerged, he predicted the world would suffer from a pandemic, along with notable disease and flu experts.

In a 2015 TED talk, Gates said the world was "not ready for the next epidemic."

This month, the billionaire announced that his new book will explore his views on how to prevent the next pandemic.

It will also discuss how he became the subject online conspiracy theories, which claimed that he was exploiting the vaccines to implant microchips in people.