Professor Robin Shattuck and a small team here in West London are in a global race to find an inoculation against the potentially fatal virus.

They've had one major breakthrough ready.

They're nearly at the clinical trial stage.

To get here would normally take 2 to 3 years.

They've done it in 14 days.

We'll have it in animal models by the beginning of next week, so we're kind of short track that part.

The next phase will be to move that from early animal testing into first in human studies on dhe.

We think with adequate funding, we can do that in a period off a few months.

The U.

K has pledged £20 million to Seppi the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an international agency set up in 2017 to deal with health crises exactly like this one on dhe.

A further £20 million for rapid research into Corona virus.

Here in the UK, the money is crucial, but so too, is knowledge.

3 2003 SARS epidemic killed some 800 people.

At the time, China was severely criticized for withholding information.

This time it's been praised for sharing crucial data with the international health community.

The lessons learned falling the 2003 SARS outbreak approving crucial in helping scientists deal with this epidemic.

But the SARS vaccine was never fully developed.

Once the virus died out, the funding dried up.

Dr.

David Heymann is one of the world's leading experts on infectious diseases.

He led the international fight against SARS and told me this time of vaccine must be developed.

Today we have a new our Coalition Coalition on Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation, which is based here in London, which is stimulating development of vaccines and hopefully that will continue to stimulate development of Corona vaccines.

After this outbreak is over, it may not be effective in getting a vaccine for this outbreak.

The vaccine may not even be necessary, but it would be nice to have a Corona virus vaccine somewhere on the shelf.

It could be rolled out during a future epidemic.

The Corona virus is still spreading fast.

It's possible it could die off eventually, but it's also true that it has the potential to become a pandemic.