China plans to start testing a SARS vaccine on humans by the end of the year, the official Xinhua news agency said tdoay.
Mr Yin Hongzhang, head of the Biological Product Section of the State Food and Drug Administration, was quoted as saying the agency was expected to approve clinical tests by the end of December.
Pre-clinical trials of the vaccine on monkeys have been completed, Mr Ying was quoted as saying. Such tests showed the vaccine was effective against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome without serious side effects, it said.
The vaccine's developer has produced 1,400 shots of the vaccine and has prepared another 20,000 doses.
The firm's scientists have been working on a vaccine since April, it said. The World Health Organisation has said a viable SARS vaccine could take at least two years to develop.
China's Health Ministry, which was not immediately available for comment on reports of the vaccine, said there have been no SARS cases in the country since the last patient left hospital on August 16th.
The flu-like virus emerged in southern China late last year, killing about 350 people in the country and infecting more than 5,000. It infected more than 8,000 people worldwide, killing over 800.