China’s wealthiest man and one of the world’s billionaires, Jack Ma, had donated $14million to scientists to help develop vaccines to fight the spread of the deadly coronavirus that has killed at least 170 people and sickened over 7,700.
Jack Ma who is the founder of e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, donated the funds through his foundation. Some of the money will go to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering. The rest will go to scientists across the world who are working towards finding a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Jack Ma foundation released a statement speaking on the donation where they said on Weibo:
‘The Jack Ma Foundation will exhaust our abilities to provide more help to the development and growth of medical science.’
The World Health Organisation (WH0) emergency committee is also expected to meet on Thursday to decide whether to declare an international public health emergency.
The move comes as the 195 Americans evacuated from Wuhan, the Hubei province city of 11 million where the outbreak originated, are undergoing three days of testing and monitoring at a Southern California military base to make sure they do not show signs of the virus.
A group of 210 Japanese evacuees from Wuhan landed Thursday at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on a second government-chartered flight, according to the foreign ministry. Reports said nine of those aboard the flight showed signs of cough and fever. France, New Zealand, Australia and other countries are also pulling out their citizens or making plans to do so.
World Health Organization emergencies chief said the few cases of human-to-human spread of the virus outside China, in Japan, Germany, Canada and Vietnam were of “great concern” and were part of the reason the U.N. health agency’s director-general was reconvening a committee of experts on Thursday to assess whether the outbreak should be declared a global emergency.
No reported cases in Africa yet, as African countries are already taking measures to prevent the virus from their respective countries. The Nigerian Government also have issued directives to all agencies to put measures in place to check all travellers, especially those coming into the country from China and other countries where the coronavirus has been reported.
Hopefully, the Jack Ma and other donations will help finding a lasting cure for the virus that is fast becoming a world health disaster/tragedy…