US officials report coronavirus vaccine likely to be ready in 3 months

The United States health officials on Friday said that the development of coronavirus vaccine is progressing well without any glitches. The announcement was made by a US health official in a press briefing conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. One of the members of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force during the press briefing said that the work is underway and the vaccine would hopefully be ready within three months.

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"Last time we had a briefing like this I mentioned to you that we were in the process of developing, implementing and testing a variety of countermeasures in the form of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. A number of organisations, pharmaceutical companies, individual investigators were involved in developing a vaccine or vaccines for the novel coronavirus. The one that the NIH is working on in with collaboration with Moderna would hopefully and likely be ready within 3 months," Dr. Tony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in the briefing. 

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Coronavirus outbreak

The novel coronavirus has surpassed the death toll of 774 recorded globally during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that originated in China. The 2019-nCoV, the official name of coronavirus is a highly contagious and life-threatening disease that started in December last year. 

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According to the latest media reports, the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus has claimed more than 800 lives in China alone and the confirmed reported cases have reached up to 34,000 as of February 8. The disease is believed to have originated in a seafood market in Hubei's Wuhan city, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, where animals were reportedly being traded illegally. As per US CDC, confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in 27 other countries.

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