A new vaccine has been developed that halt the scourge of the nation’s deadliest drug, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Yesterday, the CDC reported that fentanyl, a type of synthetic opioid, is responsible for 18,335 deaths in 2016 — an astounding 29 percent increase from 2013, and now the leading drug in overdose deaths, the report found.

But on Thursday, scientists from the Scripps Research Institute say they’ve discovered a vaccine that could not only prevent overdoses, but also curb addiction to the drug at the heart of the country’s opioid epidemic.

The findings of this opioid-blocking antibody were tested on mice, so it’s too soon to say it’ll be effective on humans, but the results were promising and warrant future study on primates, lead researcher Kim Janda tells The Post.

In the study, they tested the vaccine’s ability to allow the mice feel pain — something fentanyl blocks. Janda says that they tested the ability to feel pain because it parallels more sophisticated measures of addiction, such as seeing if the subjects will take the drug over food.

While on the vaccine, the mice were far more likely to feel pain compared to those who were on fentanyl, suggesting that the vaccine could be helpful in curbing addiction.

The researchers also found that it’s pretty much perfect when it comes to preventing overdoses: 100 percent of the mice who were given a fatal dose of fentanyl followed by the vaccine lived to see another day.