Bill Gates shared his views on the ongoing spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19 across the globe and gave a bittersweet message in a thread of tweets on Tuesday. The Microsoft co-founder reflected upon some crucial facts about the variant how it has impacted his own life.

He said that he had already called off most of his plans for the holiday season as COVID cases in the United States have surged in the past week. Gates further warned that “we could be entering the worst part of the pandemic.”

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The tweet read, “Just when it seemed like life would return to normal, we could be entering the worst part of the pandemic. Omicron will hit home for all of us. Close friends of mine now have it, and I’ve canceled most of my holiday plans.”

While noting that his close friends were also getting infected with the virus, the billionaire wrote, “If there’s good news here, it’s that omicron moves so quickly that once it becomes dominant in a country, the wave there should last less than 3 months. Those few months could be bad, but I still believe if we take the right steps, the pandemic can be over in 2022.”

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“It won’t be like this forever. Someday the pandemic will end, and the better we look after each other, the sooner that time will come”, Bill Gates wrote on Tuesday.

The news comes as the United States has recorded a dramatic spike in COVID cases, driven by the new variant. Earlier this week, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that omicron was now the dominant strain in the country, surpassing its predecessor delta.