Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to offer $25M to eliminate COVID-19

Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is signing up with the resist the coronavirus. On Friday the Facebook CEO and his better half, Priscilla Chan, co-founder of the effort, appeared on CBS This Morning to reveal that their structure will be contributing $25 million to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, to assist speed advancement of infection treatments.

Announced previously this month, the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator was produced by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with MasterCard and UK-based medical structure Wellcome. 

The Gates Foundation and Wellcome each vowed $50 million towards the preliminary financing of the accelerator, with MasterCard contributing $25 million. 

Chan informed CBS This Morning that the objective of the group was to “screen all the drugs that we know have potential effects against coronavirus,” and she included that “figuring out drugs is always expensive, but philanthropy can do a role in kickstarting” the procedure. 

“Often a drug can be helpful against multiple diseases,” Zuckerberg stated. “So you can basically take all those drugs that have already been screened as safe and test them to see if they might also have a positive impact for either preventing the coronavirus or reducing the symptoms (of the disease) and making it less damaging.”

The accelerator is simply among the methods executives from significant tech business are assisting combat the pandemic. 

Earlier this month, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma said he’d donate 500,000 test kits and 1 million face masks to the US, while Tesla and SpaceX head Elon Musk said he’ll be directing some of his plants to make ventilators. Musk also donated equipment to UCLA Health to help personnel at the medical center. 

As of press time, there’ve been nearly 560,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world, with more than 86,000 cases in the United States, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins University. Over 25,000 people have died as a result of the pandemic. 

Disclosure: CNET is owned by CBS.