Moderna’s chief expects enough vaccines for everyone by next year. Much of the world is still waiting.

With the industry as a whole expanding production, “enough doses should be available by the middle of next year so that everyone on this earth can be vaccinated,” the French billionaire said.

Whether his predictions will come true will likely depend on whether the immunity gap narrows between rich countries, that bid high in the race for vaccines, and poorer countries that rely on trickling donations.

“It is an obscenity” that some governments have hoarded, and sometimes wasted, shots while people elsewhere still wait for their first doses, U.N. chief António Guterres told leaders in New York on Wednesday.

Nearly 80 percent of people in the world’s wealthier nations already have their first doses. But, in part because of supply problems and biotech firms like Moderna selling most early doses to rich countries, that figure goes down to 20 percent in poorer parts of the world.

President Biden, who like other leaders has faced calls to do more, announced Wednesday that the United States will buy 500 million more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to donate to countries that need it.

Vaccination rates remain in single digits across most of Africa, while by contrast the United States and the United Kingdom are looking to start offering booster shots — which have turned into another symbol of pandemic inequality.

The Moderna boss expects people will have to get a refresher every 1 to 3 years. “We will end up in a situation similar to that of the flu,” he said. “You can either get vaccinated and have a good winter. Or you don’t do it and risk getting sick and possibly even ending up in hospital.”

The co-creator of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine also predicts the disease will end up closer to the common cold. British scientist Sarah Gilbert told a webinar the virus would probably not mutate into an even more deadly version that can skirt vaccines.

“We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily,” she said, playing down fears that have stemmed from the spread of highly contagious variants.

Other officials have not shared that same level of optimism. England’s chief medical officer warned on Wednesday that children who don’t get their vaccines would end up with covid-19 at some point as the virus keeps circulating.

“They will get it sooner or later because this is incredibly infectious,” Chris Witty said, although he did tell lawmakers that vaccines would cut the risk of infection by at least half. “We’re not going to see a situation where it just sort of stops at a certain point.”