Coronavirus: Australian scientists first to recreate virus outside China.
Scientists in Australia have become the first to recreate the new coronavirus outside of China in what they have called a "significant breakthrough".
The discovery will be shared with the World Health Organization (WHO) in the hope it may help efforts to find to diagnose and treat the virus.
Doctors said the copy could be used as "control material" for testing and "will be a game changer for diagnosis".
That could involve an early-diagnosis test which could detect the virus in people who have not displayed symptoms.
What's next: The virus will be shipped to scientists at expert laboratories that are working closely with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Europe and used in Australian public health labs as "positive control material."
The Doherty Institute-grown virus is expected to be used to generate an antibody test, which allows detection of the virus in patients who haven't displayed symptoms and were therefore unaware they had the virus, according to Mike Catton, deputy director of the Doherty Institute.
"An antibody test will enable us to retrospectively test suspected patients so we can gather a more accurate picture of how widespread the virus is, and consequently, among other things, the true mortality rate," Catton said in a statement.
"It will also assist in the assessment of effectiveness of trial vaccines."