Madonna has donated $1 million to Bill and Melinda Gates’ COVID-19 foundation, to help create a vaccine for the coronavirus.
In a statement on her website, the 61-year-old: “I am so impressed by the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Covid-19 Therapeutics Accelerator’s urgent efforts to find new or existing drugs that could effectively prevent or treat the disease.”
“Harnessing the strength and knowledge of the research community, the Accelerator’s critical scientific progress will inform how we end this pandemic and prevent future impact from the virus.”
“I send enormous gratitude and strength to the courageous first responders, medical professionals and scientists who are protecting our communities, those suffering and our most vulnerable.”
Read my full statement here: https://t.co/0qwctDn3m5
— Madonna (@Madonna) April 3, 2020
The foundation aims to fund seven different research labs, in order to find a cure for the virus – which could take well over a year.
Speaking on The Daily Show, Bill said: “Because our foundation has such deep expertise in infectious diseases, we’ve thought about the epidemic, we did fund some things to be more prepared, like a vaccine effort.”
“Our early money can accelerate things. Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven, just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying, ‘OK, which vaccine works?’ and then building the factory.”
“It’ll be a few billion dollars we’ll waste on manufacturing for the constructs that don’t get picked because something else is better.”
“But a few billion in this, the situation we’re in, where there’s trillions of dollars … being lost economically, it is worth it.”
