Dolly Parton Helps Fund COVID Vaccine

Country music legend Dolly Parton made a 1 million dollar donation to coronavirus research earlier this year. That donation has helped fund the Moderna vaccine which has shown a 95 percent protection rate against the deadly virus. Both Phizer and Moderna have made headlines this week with favorable results from their vaccine trials.

Back in April, Parton’s longtime friend Dr. Naji Abumrad of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology, and Inflammation, told her they were making “some exciting advancements” in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine.

The two become friends after Parton was involved in a car accident in 2014 and was treated at Vanderbilt University. Parton also encouraged her fans who could afford it to donate to the Vanderbilt Health Covid-19 research fund. Since then, it’s raised more than $100,000 of its $250,000 goal.

Moderna has attributed their ability to developed and produce potentially 1 billion doses of the vaccine directly to the country music star’s donation. The company has applied for Emergency Use Authorization with the FDA which would allow them to produce doses quickly due to the deadliness of the disease.

Vaccinations could begin as soon as late December, top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said, though they’ll be made available first to high-risk groups like health care workers, the elderly, and people with underlying medical conditions.

Parton told BBC, “I’m sure many, many millions of dollars from many people went into that [research fund] but I felt so proud to have been part of that little seed money that hopefully will grow into something great and help to heal this world—Lord knows we need it!”

Her donation to COVID research is just a recent example of Parton’s philanthropy. Her Imagination Library gifts free books to children from birth until starting school in participating areas. She recently told Oprah Winfrey that she never had children “because I believe that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like the Imagination Library.”

Photo Courtesy of Facebook.