Gates Foundation pledges $250 million to fight pandemic

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said Thursday that it had pledged $250 million in additional funding for the global campaign to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Part of the funds will go towards the distribution of vital doses of COVID-19 vaccines to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. “We have new drugs and more potential vaccines than we could have expected at the beginning of the year,” Bill Gates said in a statement.

Financing is one of the biggest obstacles for Africa, a continent that is home to some of the poorest countries in the world. The World Health Organization identified a goal of vaccinating 3% of Africans by March 2021 and 20% by the end of next year. But he said that only about a quarter of the continent’s 47 countries have sufficient plans for resources and financing.

Solomon Zewdu, COVID-19 response coordinator for the Gates Foundation in Africa, said that part of the funding announced Thursday will help ensure that vaccines reach some 780 million people on the continent.

Africa recorded more than 2.3 million cases, of which 54,800 were fatal.