Chan Zuckerberg Initiative pledges $25 million to fund researching COVID-19 treatments

New Delhi, March 29 (PTI) The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic arm of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, has announced plans to team up with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to donate $25 million to a research fund exploring possible COVID-19 treatments.

"I'm really proud to share that (The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is) going to be joining Gates and others to put together something they're calling the therapeutics accelerator to fight coronavirus," Chan told "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King.

Chan told King that their goal is "to fund a group to screen all the drugs that we know have potential effects against coronavirus."

Zuckerberg said one drug can often be used to treat multiple diseases.

"You can basically take all those drugs that have already been screened as safe and test them to see if they might also have a positive impact for either preventing the coronavirus or reducing the symptoms and making it less damaging," he said.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is sinking the cash into an effort, run by Zuckerberg's mentor Bill Gates, that is exploring new possible antiviral drugs that could protect people from the disease.

The donation is among the biggest single grants to an outside organisation ever given by CZI, established in 2015.

CZI's gift is the second biggest tech philanthropy donation for the coronavirus that has been publicly unveiled, falling short of only the Gates Foundation's donation to the same therapeutics fund.