Scientists aim to immunize around 30,000 volunteers and health care workers in the country, the BBC reports.
The trial will involve injecting a tiny amount of chimpanzee cold virus that carries safe genetic material of Ebola into the body, tricking it to produce an immune response. Although it’s not yet clear whether the vaccine will protect against the disease.
The medicine has been hidden in a secret location in the country since it arrived one week ago.
British pharmaceutical and healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline developed the drug alongside the U.S. National Institutes of Health; should the trial be successful, it would be the first preventative vaccine against the killer virus.
More than 8,500 people have died during the Ebola outbreak, with 3,600 succumbing to the disease in Liberia alone.
The number of new Ebola cases is in a steady decline and the World Health Organization said it was now in a new phase of the crisis response — to eradicate Ebola from West Africa.
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