(CNN) – The National Institutes of Health are working on a vaccine against the new virus that has infected hundreds and killed 17 in Asia.
“The NIH is in the process of taking the first steps towards developing a vaccine,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
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Fauci said it would take a few months until the first phase of clinical trials begins and more than a year until a vaccine is available.
The last
The virus, which was first reported in late December, has infected more than 500 people, according to an expert appointed by the Chinese government. Most of the cases have been in China, but there have been several cases in other countries.
The virus originated in animals and can be transmitted from person to person. While most patients visited an animal and seafood market in Wuhan, a city about 700 kilometers south of Beijing, some did not.
This new virus is a coronavirus, which is the same family as the virus that causes SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which was first reported in Asia in 2003 and killed more than 700 people. The Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, which has killed more than 800 people since 2012, is also caused by a coronavirus.
Working on a vaccine
A team of scientists in Texas, New York and China is also working on a vaccine, according to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
“The lesson we have learned is that coronavirus infections are serious and one of the newest and biggest threats to health in the world,” said Hotez.
He added that it is less difficult to develop a vaccine for coronaviruses than for other viruses such as HIV or influenza.
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“Every virus has its challenges, but coronaviruses can be a relatively simple vaccine target,” said Hotez.
If a vaccine is developed, he said, health workers could be among the first to receive it because they are exposed to infected patients.
It is “remarkable” that scientists can begin to develop a vaccine for a virus that was identified less than a month ago, he said.
He gave credit to the Chinese researchers, who quickly sequenced and published the genome of the virus.
“With SARS, it took us almost a year to identify and map the entire genetic code,” he said. “Now we will do it in a few weeks.”
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