A child waves as she sits in a vehicle carrying residents evacuated from a public housing building, following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, outside Hong Mei House, at Cheung Hong Estate in Hong Kong, China February 11, 2020. (Reuters)

The first vaccine targeting China’s coronavirus could be available in 18 months, “so we have to do everything today using available weapons”, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva on Tuesday.

He said the virus had been named COVID-19, explaining that it was important to avoid stigma and that other names could be inaccurate.

The UN health agency has also asked countries to be “as aggressive as possible” in fighting. “If the world doesn’t want to wake up and consider the virus as public enemy number one, I don’t think we will learn from our lessons,” Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.

“…We are still in containment strategy and should not allow the virus to have a space to have local transmission,” he said.