LONDON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The British government announced Monday that it has pledged a substantial amount of funds to develop new vaccines against the novel coronavirus and other infectious diseases.
The 20 million pounds (about 26 million U.S. dollars) in new funding will go to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which is an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic and civil society organizations launched in Davos in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics, according to the government.
The new funding "will help our globally recognized vaccine development capabilities continue to develop new defences against emerging diseases including coronavirus," said Health Secretary Matt Hancock in a statement.
The CEPI was originally formed in response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
"Our hope is that, with our partners, we can get an investigational vaccine from gene sequencing of the pathogen through to clinical testing in 16 weeks. The earliest stage of clinical trials (Phase I), to establish the safety of investigational vaccines, would take around two to four months," said Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of the CEPI.
