Remembering Jim Jones

On 1st April 2020 my Dad, Jim Jones, sadly died at the Royal Blackburn Hospital after contracting COVID-19 in his care home. Whilst he lived a long and happy life, he would still be here today, along with tens of thousands of others, if effective diagnostic testing, therapeutics and vaccines were widely available and accessible worldwide.

Wellcome is part of a funding coalition which aims to speed-up the response to the COVID-19 epidemic by identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling-up treatments. The partners are committed to equitable access, including making products available and affordable in low-resource settings. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator will play a catalytic role by accelerating and evaluating new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients with COVID-19 in the immediate term, and other viral pathogens in the longer-term. Currently there are no broad-spectrum antivirals or immunotherapies available for the fight against emerging pathogens, and none approved for use on COVID-19.