Google also contributed $2.5 million to pop-up vaccination sites and related efforts in Latino, Black, and rural US areas.
Google on Thursday announced a pledge to fund and promote coronavirus vaccines worldwide, including an advertising grant of $250 million for pro-vaccination groups.
Through its philanthropy arm, Google will pay for 250,000 vaccines in “low and middle-income countries,” as classified by Google’s partner Gavi, a charity focused on vaccine distribution.
Google has also contributed $2.5 million to pop-up vaccination sites and related efforts in Latino, Black, and rural US rural areas. According to a blog post by Google’s Chief Health Officer Karen Desalvo, the $250 million advertising grant will fund more than 2.5 billion public service announcements related to vaccines.
Google hired Karen Desalvo, a former Obama administration official, and other medical veterans for their new health department and Alphabet Inc. Holds for the unit. Many public steps have been taken to combat the epidemic. The company offers customized search results and vaccination locations on Google Maps for online inquiries about viruses. In March 2020, Google pledged $800 million for the epidemic for frontline employees and advertising credits for healthcare organizations.
However, the company’s video unit, YouTube, has been criticized for showing a video questioning the COVID-19 vaccine. The government has not widely used Google’s contact tracing efforts, and in fact, Alphabet’s health unit’s COVID-19 testing project ended in California in less than a year.