The Gates' pledge will be used to support treatment efforts across the globe, build infrastructure to treat patients in Africa and Southern Asia, and fund the development of a vaccine, the couple's foundation said in a press release. They previously pledged to donate $10 million.
Bill Gates has long warned that the world is ill-equipped to manage a pandemic, Business Insider's Aria Bendix reported. The WHO has yet to conclusively say that the novel coronavirus has reached the level of a pandemic, but Gates disagrees. "I hope it's not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise," Gates wrote in an op-ed for the New England Journal of Medicine February 28.
Gates outlined his suggestions for containing the crisis in the essay, including sending highly trained healthcare workers to low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Southern Asia, establishing an international database on information on the outbreak, and funding vaccine manufacturing facilities.