BEIJING, Dec 5: China's government announced on Sunday that a vaccine for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) had emerged from the first phase clinical test as both safe and effective, state press reported.

Xinhua news agency quoted Wang Xiaofang, a senior official with the Ministry of Science and Technology, as saying that 36 volunteers, who had been injected with the vaccine 56 days earlier, had not reported any abnormal physical reactions and that antibodies were found in 24.

Yin Weidong, director of the research programme, was quoted as saying the test was strictly secured and that his team had already set technical standards for manufacturing the vaccine.

Xinhua quoted Lin Jiangtao, a professor at the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital who coordinated the clinical test, as saying the test carried out since May covered 18 men and 18 women aged 21 to 40.

The tests were carried out after success with animals, Xinhua said. However the drug will not be ready for commercial use until the completion of the second and third phase tests, Xinhua said, without giving details of what they would entail nor when they would be completed.

Late last month a Beijing newspaper had said the tests were expected to be completed by January. Sars killed almost 800 people, mostly in Hong Kong and China, in a world wide outbreak that infected more than 8,000 by the end of last year. -AFP