China not yet shared new virus strain with Russia, says Russian deputy PM

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova

MOSCOW, February 3. /TASS/: The Chinese side has not yet shared the new coronavirus strain with Russia, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on Monday.

"I would like to say that our specialists are working in this area. The Chinese side has not given us a possibility to use its data in what concerns the vaccine or the strain. So, we are working on this problem using available sources and what we have at the moment," she said.

In late December 2019, Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of an unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, a large trade and industrial metropolis in central China with a population of 11 million. The infecting agent was identified as coronavirus 2019-nCoV.

Cases of the new coronavirus were also reported from 23 other countries, including Australia, Vietnam, India, Canada, the United States and Thailand. On January 30, the World Health Organization declared the new coronavirus outbreak an international public health emergency.

By now, the number of confirmed cases of the disease in China has exceeded 17,000, with more than 360 killed by this coronavirus. One lethal case was reported outside China, in the Philippines.