China‘s richest man has donated 100 million yuan (£11 million, $14.4 million) to help scientists develop the vaccine for a new strain of deadly coronavirus, which has rocked the Asian superpower and killed at least 133 people.
Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, announced the generous aid on Wednesday through his foundation as the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan accelerates.
Forty per cent of the endowment fund, or 40 million yuan (£4.4 million, $5.8 million), is due to be evenly split between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering, whose experts are striving to create the inoculation.
The rest of the grant will support staff from research and scientific establishments in China and around the world in the control and prevention efforts of the coronavirus.
Self-made Mr Ma, 55, is worth $42.8billion (£32.9billion) and was the wealthiest man in China in 2019, according to Forbes.
His foundation said it would also offer all necessary AI computing power to research teams free of charge to help the country tackle the fast-spreading disease.
‘Jack Ma Foundation will exhaust our abilities to provide more help to the development and growth of medical science,’ the tycoon’s charity said today through its official account on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.
The news came days after Alibaba had already earmarked one billion yuan (£110million, $144million) for purchasing medical supplies for hospitals in Wuhan and Hubei Province, the group said in a statement on Sunday.
Chinese tycoons are flocking to help the Hubei government fight the lethal virus.
So far, more than 150 companies have given away a total of 4.5 billion yuan (£499million, $649million) to overcome the national health crisis, according to Chinese Entrepreneurs Magazine.
These firms include Pony Ma’s Tencent (£33million, $43million), Robin Li’s Baidu (£33million, $43million), Xu Jiayin’s Evergrande Group (£22million, $28million) and Ren Zhengfei’s Huawei (£3.3million, $4.3million).
Li Lanjuan, an expert from China’s National Health Commission, told state media China News on Tuesday that experts were ‘very close’ to creating the coronavirus vaccine, but the whole process ‘will take time’.
She estimated that it would take one month from now for scientists to lay their hands on the first vaccine sample, another two weeks for specialists to inspect the sample and at least six weeks more for the government to approve the vaccine.