US Public Health Research Agency Starts Developing Vaccine For New Coronavirus - Director

US Public Health Research Agency Starts Developing Vaccine for New Coronavirus - Director

The United States' governmental agency responsible for public health research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has started working on a development of a vaccine that could cure a deadly new form of coronavirus that has originated in China, a senior official within the agency has said

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st January, 2020) The United States' governmental agency responsible for public health research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has started working on a development of a vaccine that could cure a deadly new form of coronavirus that has originated in China, a senior official within the agency has said.

"The NIH is in the process of taking the first steps towards the development of a vaccine," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, as quoted by CNN.

Fauci then added that it would take around several months before the first clinical trials could be conducted and more than one year until a vaccine is developed.

A mysterious pneumonia broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan last month that was confirmed by Beijing and the World Health Organization to be a new strain of coronavirus.

On Monday, China's National Health Commission confirmed that the new virus can be spread via human-to-human transmission. On Tuesday, Wuhan Municipal Health Committee confirmed that a fourth person has died after contracting the virus. The number of confirmed cases in China has exceeded 200.

Several people have tested positive for the new coronavirus strain in South Korea, Japan, Australia and Thailand, with the global spread of the virus feared to increase as many Chinese nationals plan to travel during the upcoming Lunar New Year holidays.