BEIJING, March 26 (Xinhua) -- China's military medical experts have wasted no time stepping up drug and vaccine research as well as virus source tracing to aid the country's battle against the novel coronavirus, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

Ren Guoqiang made the remarks at a press conference.

On March 16, a recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine developed by a research team led by Chen Wei, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences, passed a review by authorities and was greenlighted for clinical trials, Ren said.