The chair of infectious diseases at H.K.U., Yuen told reporters that he and his colleagues were able to isolate the new virus from his city's first imported case, and transform it into a vaccine that, upon being tested and approved, can be publicly released.

"We have already produced the vaccine, but it will take a long time to test on animals," Yuen is quoted as saying, without giving an exact timeframe for when these tests might be completed. He did, however, indicate that the testing phase on animals usually takes a few months, followed by at least another year to conduct human clinical trials.

Yuen says he based his new vaccine on a nasal spray influenza vaccine that he previously developed. By simply modifying this earlier vaccine with part of the surface antigen of novel coronavirus, Yuen and his team believe they've cracked the code.