Richest Chinese donates $14 million for fight against coronavirus

Alibaba founder, Jack Ma has donated $14 million to help in the development of a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus which originated in Wuhan, China.

The money which was donated was meant for research as well as prevention and treatment of the coronavirus.

 The donation was made after an announcement on Saturday by Alibaba that it is setting up a $144 million fund to purchase medical supplies for Wuhan and Hubei province.

According to CNN Business report, $5.8 million will be sent to two Chinese Government Research organizations – Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering – while the remaining will be utilized for the prevention and control of the virus.

Johnson and Johnson, a drug making company said it is “pretty confident” of finding a vaccine for the virus.

Paul Stoffels, the company’s Chief Scientific officer said, “We have dozens of scientists working on this so we are pretty confident we can get something made that will work and stay active for the longer term.”

He however added that it could take up to a year for the vaccine to be available on the market.

“We will see in the next few weeks how this goes,” he added.

 The virus has since its diagnosis killed 132 people with about 6000 cases confirmed in China, while more than 80 other cases have been confirmed outside of China.