U.S. charities are donating millions to the fight against COVID-19, including the development of new drugs and improvements in detection and treatment of the disease in American cities and other countries.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently gave up to $100 million to fight a new type of coronavirus. The funds will fund the foundation’s collaborative work with other charities, which recently committed $20 million to clinical trials to evaluate the effectiveness of two existing antimalarial drugs to prevent COVID-19.

“Multilateral organizations, the federal government, private companies and charities must work together to slow the spread of infection,” foundation chief Mark Suzman said Feb. 5.

The Gates Foundation and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies Foundation are also funding efforts to combat COVID-19 worldwide.

Scientists in various countries are researching treatments and testing existing drugs for #COVID19.

Bloomberg on March 17 announced $40 million for an international initiative to detect and prevent COVID-19 in low-income countries located in Africa and elsewhere. The funds will be used to train medical personnel and develop a network of laboratories.

“There is a need in all countries to reduce the growth of the disease and to limit as much as possible the impact of the coronavirus outbreak,” Bloomberg said in a March 17 statement.

The foundations are among a list of charities that are taking an “all-American approach” in the fight against COVID-19. In particular, the government has allocated billions of dollars in emergency spending and encouraged companies and small businesses to retool their plants to support measures to fight the virus.

Large foundations continue to work throughout the U.S. and abroad, and other organizations, including regional and local charities, are helping those most in need.

On March 19, the No Kid Hungry campaign announced $5 million for a national effort to provide lunches to out-of-school children to offset one or two meals a day for schoolchildren.

The California Foundation will also direct five million dollars to support local health care organizations that provide services to farm workers and the homeless. The Ohio-based organizations CareSource and The FoodBank Inc. report providing more than 50,000 meals to low-income seniors in self-insulated settings.

Meanwhile, United Way’s departments and territorial offices across the U.S. have decided to give millions of dollars to help those who are ill or have lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

The new COVID-19 response and recovery financial assistance package for Atlanta and suburbs is being allocated to frontline organizations like @GradyHealthFdn, @givingkitchen, @goodsamatlanta & @ATL_AWBI.

“Now more than ever – when kids can’t go to school, stores are temporarily closed, plays are canceled and employees are laid off – we need community support and financial resources,” United Way of Greater Atlanta and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta said in a March 17 joint statement.