If ever there were a time for billionaires, isn’t this it?

Read: The modern supply chain is snapping

Some of the world’s richest humans are contributing to the effort, but in varying ways. Jack Ma, the former chairman and co-founder of China-based Alibaba, purchased several million testing kits and face masks and had them shipped to affected countries, including 500,000 kits and 1 million masks to the United States. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has been in contact with the White House and announced that the company would hire 100,000 workers at higher salaries to handle the spike in demand for shipping, and that it would prioritize filling orders of essential medical and household supplies. “We recognize that at times like this, large companies can really help, and we’re standing by to do so, in addition to serving our customers who need critical supplies and services at this time,” an Amazon spokesperson told me.

In the U.S., two of the nation’s leading public-health philanthropists are Bloomberg, for whom the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is named, and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. They also happen to live in the two biggest coronavirus hot spots: New York City and Washington State.

Both Gates and Bloomberg have, through their eponymous foundations, announced commitments totalling several hundred million dollars to combat the pandemic in the U.S. and abroad. But, as of today, neither is directly funding the purchase of crucial supplies.

“The foundation does not typically directly fund procurement of health equipment or supplies,” a spokesperson for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation told me. “During global health emergencies, however, our goal is to provide fast and flexible funding to government agencies, multilateral organizations and others at the front lines. This allows our partners to quickly translate funding into impact, and gives them discretion to purchase emergency supplies as needed.”

The Gates Foundation is targeting its money toward detection, isolation, and treatment efforts as well as to research toward a vaccine and possible treatments. It’s also offering technical assistance to government agencies working on a vaccine and directing funds to curb the local outbreak in the Greater Seattle region.

Bloomberg Philanthropies has launched two initiatives. One will, beginning this week, convene top officials and public-health experts from cities around the country in virtual gatherings for up-to-date virus information and crisis coaching. The other is a $40 million project to combat the pandemic in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa, in partnership with the World Health Organization and Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And what about buying and donating supplies and medical equipment? That’s not really what Bloomberg Philanthropies does, Dr. Kelly Henning, an epidemiologist and the head of the organization’s public-health program, told me.