Bulgari renews its commitment in the fight against Covid-19. Earlier today, during an interview with SkyNews CEO, Jean-Christophe Babin announced that they will be partnering with the University of Oxford to fund their ongoing and future vaccine research.

The university’s Jenner Institute is among the world’s leaders and is currently, heavily engaged in the development of a Covid-19 vaccine. Bulgari has said that it will also fund academic scholarships related to this research.

Says Babin, “Bulgari got itself involved in the Covid-19 fight very early, converting one of our fragrance factories in Italy into a gel sanitizer production factory. We donated it all of it, firstly, to Italian hospitals then to Swiss hospitals and last, but not least, to British hospitals with the support of the NHS. For us this was a first step.”

First step because, let’s not forget that Bulgari was also one of the first luxury brand names that showed its commitment towards the first against the virus with a substantial contribution to the Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital, which is Italy’s Institute for Infectious Diseases based in Rome. Here, three researchers, Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, Francesca Colavita and Concetta Castilletti had managed to successfully isolate the virus in under 48 hours, earlier in March of 2020.

Babin continues, “This was simply the first step towards helping the planet, because we understood that Covid-19 is a strong warning and that we should look beyond and try as much as we can as a private company to support efforts in eradicating this virus forever. In this concern, the Jenner Institute is clearly leading the pack and is the organization that is most likely to come with an efficient vaccine.”

But it’s not just the Jenner institute that Bulgari is supporting. “We are a global company. We have great teams in all major markets. When we formulated the idea to contribute in such a manner, we asked our teams in these to help us identify institutes, which had the most promising prospects,” said Babin. “Obviously, for the UK, Oxford came immediately top of the list. In the USA, it was Rockefeller; in Italy [the aforementioned] Spallanzani. Once these institutes were identified, we decided as Bulgari, to create the Bulgari VirusFree Fund to channel our direct support.”

Babin also adds that Bulgari’s support for these top of the line institutes will not only stop at Covid-19. “[These institutes] will probably significantly contribute to the  eradication of, first, Covid-19 – which is a priority. But beyond Covid-19, for sure, other viruses. Because Covid-19, I think is a wakeup call to humankind that pandemics are things of the 19th, 18th or 17th centuries. With eight billion people on the plant [a pandemic] is as devastating today as it was in the Middle Ages.”