China Races to Develop Novel Coronavirus Vaccine During Lunar New Year

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has started developing vaccines against the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), an official with the center said Sunday.

The CDC has isolated the virus and is currently identifying seed strain, said Xu Wenbo, head of the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention under the CDC, adding that they are also screening drugs targeting pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus.

Meanwhile the CDC is closely monitoring the virus to study how it mutates.

"Every virus has its own special characteristics, and according to what mankind has learned about coronaviruses, the virus mutates as it spreads in the human body. This is what we've learned from other, previous coronaviruses. This time we are closely monitoring things but because of the difference between coronaviruses and other viruses, we've not seen clear mutation of the virus thus far, whether from environmental samples or samples from patients. But like I said this is what we know [as of now] about this virus that we're dealing with. Base on virology studies, the virus would not become how it is now without any mutation. It's just that the differences [caused by mutation] among this virus is very small, less than one percent, so we need time to find out exactly where it mutated. So as of now we are further monitoring and observing things," said Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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