China's state-owned pharmaceutical enterprise Sinopharm Group is not only working on developing a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, but has also stepped up efforts to produce chloroquine phosphate, an antimalarial drug that has a certain curative effect on COVID-19, officials said at a press conference on Tuesday.

File photo: CGTN

Officials said the group is developing the vaccine in Beijing and Wuhan and the cultivation of inactivated vaccine is underway.

The group has also produced nucleic acid test kits able to test one million patient specimens.