Donations and Supplies Keep Coming

Supplies and donations have come in from wealthy executives and corporates and even scientists around the world to fight the COVID-19 outbreak. Apple doubled its donation to China’s efforts to fight COVID-19 to over US$7 million, CEO Tim Cook posted on Weibo, weeks after the company said it had reopened all its 42 stores in one of its largest markets. Cook said in a post on Twitter last week that Apple donated 10 million masks for health professionals in the US and Europe, which is sourced through its supply networks.

Chinese billionaire and Alibaba Co-founder Jack Ma has pledged similar medical supply donations including masks and testing kits, as have leaders of other Chinese tech giants such as Baidu, Tencent, Huawei and ByteDance, according to Chinese media reports.

In Europe, scientists and technologists will launch a joint initiative to support the use of digital applications in the fight against COVID-19 while complying with the region’s tough privacy laws. The Pan-European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) brings together 130 researchers from eight countries to develop applications that can support contact tracing efforts within countries and across borders.

“Our goal is to provide a backbone for the digital core components of the global fight against COVID-19,” said Hans-Christian Boos, Founder of business automation company Arago and member of a digital advisory council to the German government. These applications will become more important in containing future COVID-19 flare-up once countrywide lockdowns have succeeded in flattening the curve of the pandemic’s spread.

As of last night, more than 851,000 people worldwide have contracted coronavirus with 42,053 dying from it. In Mexico, health authorities reported that the number of infected rose to 1,215 while the death toll is 29. Italy has been hit the hardest with 12,428 fatalities.