The federal government has announced another $20 million to fund COVID-19 research.
That is on top of the $7 million the government had originally planned to spend.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu said it is important for Canada to make this investment.
“Canada has a wide body of fantastic researchers who actually have expertise in the area of vaccine development, in the area of treatment of viruses and also all of the social issues that go along with an outbreak like this,” said Hajdu.
Nearly 50 research teams from across Canada will focus on accelerating the development, testing, and implementation of measures to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.
“The announcement today is for $27 million that specifically target toward the mitigating measures, the diagnostics, combating misinformation, looking at vaccines and the prospects of developing that in a more timely manner,” said Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains.
Bains said the government will continue to make more investments on an as-needed basis.
“We have significant resources, federal labs, federal researchers at our disposal. We have got world-class researchers behind us. We’re working around-the-clock and we’ve made it very clear that we’re willing to deploy the resources required,” he said.
As of Friday, there were more than 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada, but no deaths have been reported.
Government of Canada invests $27M in #coronavirus research #COVID19 https://t.co/L9WGTvvpMQ
— GC Newsroom (@NewsroomGC) March 6, 2020
