Chinese scientists have published the first animal study results of a vaccine against COVID-19 in SCIENCE magazine.

The study used SARS-Coronavirus-2 strains isolated from 11 hospitalized patients from 5 nations.

Researchers chose one strain for purified inactivated virus vaccine development.

The other 10 strains were used as preclinical challenge strains.

The study has shown that the inactivated vaccine candidate induced SARS-CoV-2-specific neutralizing antibodies in animals like rhesus macaques.

This is the first challenge study on animals to prove that the vaccine candidate is safe and provides protection to rhesus macaques used in tests against the virus strains.