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China coronavirus: Hong Kong researchers have already developed vaccine but need time to test it, expert reveals
- HKU’s Professor Yuen Kwok-yung says his team is working on vaccine, having isolated virus from the city’s first imported case
- Scientists in mainland China and the United States are also racing to produce a vaccine for the deadly new coronavirus
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Hong Kong researchers have already developed a vaccine for the deadly Wuhan coronavirus – but need time to test it, according to infectious diseases expert Professor Yuen Kwok-yung.
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Scientists in mainland China and the United States were also separately racing to produce a vaccine for the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 100 people and infected thousands.
Yuen, chair of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, revealed that his team was working on the vaccine and had isolated the previously unknown virus from the city’s first imported case.
“We have already produced the vaccine, but it will take a long time to test on animals,” Yuen said, without giving a specific time frame on when it would be ready for patients.
But he said it would take months to test the vaccine on animals and at least another year to conduct clinical trials on humans before it was fit for use.
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