China will begin work on clinical trials of a vaccine against African swine fever, this was announced on Friday, May 24 by the state-owned media in China.

The Harbin State Veterinary Research Institute has vaccinated two candidates who have been shown by laboratory tests to be immune to the disease, China's National Radio reported in a message on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo.

"At the next stage, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences will accelerate the progress of experimental and clinical trials, as well as the production of vaccines," the report said. Interestingly, when Reuters tried to contact officials from Harbin, they were out of reach.

However, scientists working on vaccines for animals have expressed caution, saying that developing and launching an effective vaccine will be difficult.

“Vaccines can be very effective under research conditions, but if you apply them in this area, they can be very different,” said an international expert on African swine fever, declining to name himself because of the sensitivity of the issue.

According to him, getting the vaccine in field trials and on the market can take years. In China, at least two strains of the virus circulate, and, according to experts, the vaccine is unlikely to protect against both of them.

China has only recently begun work on a vaccine, as researchers were forbidden to work with a live virus until the disease was discovered in the country.