In a joint-venture with Wellcome Trust and Mastercard, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is stepping-up financial efforts to combat the novel coronavirus, to the tune of $125 million, said Mark Suzman in the professional blog, LinkedIn Pulse. The funds are to help identify and move up the timetable for possible COVID-19 treatments and help the world prepare to manufacture millions of doses for global use.
Pharmaceutical companies will be crucial for this endeavor, argues Suzman, called the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.
The contribution is being made through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a private foundation started in 2000 by the husband and wife that has become one of the largest in the world. According to its president Trevor Mundel, the funds will be given to 12 big pharmaceutical companies as well as small biotech entities who are actively seeking ways to develop a vaccine for the Coronavirus. There will, however, be some conditions set in place to help protect the common population, like making the medicine easily accessible at affordable prices that even the poorest places in the world can get. But even if the funds don’t end up being enough to find a cure, it still moves companies a significant step forward, allowing them to develop research as they wait for government aid. The donation enables them to test anywhere between 20 to 30,000 potential drugs during the preclinical development stage.
