Chinese business magnate and co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, has donated $14 million through his foundation to help develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus.
The Alibaba founder, according to CNN Busines, will dole out $5.8 million each to two Chinese government research organizations with the remaining funds going to support prevention and treatment efforts.
Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson earlier this week said it’s “pretty confident” the company can find a vaccine.
Paul Stoffels, the company’s chief scientific officer, in his statement to CNBC says;
We have dozens of scientists working on this so we’re pretty confident we can get something made that will work and stay active for the longer term. But it could take up to a year for the vaccine to be available on the market. “We’ll see in the next few weeks how this goes.
His donation is coming few days after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says it is immediately committing $10 million in emergency funds to fight Coronavirus.
According to a statement posted on their official website on Monday, the fund is also to be a technical support to help frontline responders in China and Africa accelerate their efforts to contain the global spread of novel Coronavirus.
It said that international cooperation would be in the areas of critical need, including efforts to identify and confirm cases, safely isolate and care for patients and accelerate the development of treatments and vaccines.
According to the foundation, its partners include the National Health Commission and Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Others are various research institutes affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen University
Chinese health authorities said there were 7,711 confirmed cases of Coronavirus in China and 170 people dead as of 29 January.
Infections have also spread to at least 15 other countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will meet on Thursday to again consider whether the virus constitutes a global health emergency.
Source: CNN
