A Cambridge company has shipped a batch of potential coronavirus vaccine for testing just two months after an outbreak of the infectious virus that started in China has killed 2,500 across the globe.

Cambridge-based Moderna announced Monday it sent the vaccine to the National Institutes of Health for phase I testing.

Moderna said its scientists began collaborating with the NIH a month ago to develop a vaccine for the highly contagious virus, with funding received from the International Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

“I want to thank the entire Moderna team for their extraordinary effort in responding to this global health emergency with record speed,” Juan Andres, Chief Technical Operations and Quality Officer at Moderna, said in a statement. “The collaboration across Moderna, with NIAID, and with CEPI has allowed us to deliver a clinical batch in 42 days from sequence identification.”

The vaccine, which Moderna calls mRNA-1273, was shipped to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to be used in their planned phase one study in the U.S., the company said.

Two weeks earlier, Moderna announced that the clinical batch of mRNA-1273 was complete and undergoing analytical testing.

Andres said that the development of the vaccine would not have been possible without the company’s Norwood manufacturing site, which “uses leading-edge technology to enable flexible operations and ensure high quality standards are met for clinical-grade material.”

Following Moderna’s announcement late Monday, MarketWatch reported that the company’s stock jumped over 15 percent.

However, the company noted in its statement that there has never been a commercial product approved for use that utilized mRNA technology, which they used to develop the vaccine.

The coronavirus outbreak is believed to have started in late December when people picked it up at a fresh food market in Wuhan, China.

Earlier this month, a UMass Boston student returning to school from Wuhan, China, became the first confirmed case of the deadly virus in Massachusetts.

He is one of 14 cases of the disease in the United States, spread across seven states.

On Tuesday, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) released a statement calling on Congress to supply more resources in response to coronavirus outbreaks in the United States.

“This current version of Coronavirus, COVID-19, represents a potential health and economic threat to our homeland,” Rogers said. “I urge passage of a clean supplemental without any extraneous provisions. We cannot play politics with the health and safety of Americans.”