Jack Ma signals more coronavirus supplies for Kenya, other countries

Airport staff at JKIA receive medical equipment donated by Jack Ma and Alibaba foundations on March 24, 2020 to help Kenya deal with the coronavirus pandemic. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Like the previous batch before it, the donations will be shipped to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which houses the African Union headquarters, before they are distributed to the 54 African countries.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has, once again, come to the aid of Africa with a second batch of donations of medical equipment to fight coronavirus.

The co-founder of e-commerce multinational Alibaba has now donated 50,000 ventilators, 200,000 suits and face shields, 2,000 thermometers, one million swabs and extraction kits as well as 500,000 gloves.

Like the previous batch before it, the donations will be shipped to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which houses the African Union headquarters, before they are distributed to the 54 African countries.

The first shipment by Jack Ma donated last month included 1.1 million testing kits, 6 million masks and 60,000 medical use protective suits and face shields to Africa.

Of these, Kenya received about 20,000 testing kits and 100,000 face masks.

The 1.3 billion-people continent now has over 9,000 confirmed cases and more than 400 fatalities so far.

A modelling by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has shown that the situation could get worse in the next few days, testing to the limit the continent’s fragile health system.

The team predicts that Africa could see up to 450,000 test positive for Covid-19 by the second week of May.

The scientists also project that each East African country will report at least 10,000 Covid-19 cases by May 10, with Uganda being the last to hit this number.

“We cannot ignore the potential risk to Africa and assume this continent of 1.3 billion people will blissfully escape this crisis. The world cannot afford the unthinkable consequences of a Covid-19 pandemic in Africa,” said Ma when he donated the first batch last month.