Chinese experts said it takes at least 6 months to develop a vaccine following a new epidemic – Global Times

China’s Global Times crossed its own news that Tianjin University has successfully developed an oral vaccine to protect against CODV 19 as experts from Beijing doubt the speed with which the cure was developed.

Key quotes

While dozens of medical companies worldwide are stepping up research and development of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, a university in North China announced Tuesday that they had successfully developed one, triggering doubts over the product's effectiveness, given it came just less than two months after the outbreak.

'It is possible to develop a vaccine in one month, but impossible to complete animal experiments in such a short time, which are vital to prove the effectiveness of the vaccine,' Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

Without clinical trials, the effect cannot be verified, and it is not known whether the virus will suggest it. Like the flu virus, it varies from year to year, so the vaccine from the previous year is basically useless, a frontline doctor surnamed Cheng who works at Wuhan Tongji Hospital told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

Yang also said the oral drug Huang's team developed may be different from preventative vaccine people usually take. 

FX implications

The news adds strength to the market’s risk-off mood with the USD/JPY stepping back from the recent pullback to 110.17 while AUD/USD also stays under pressure around 0.6600.