COVID-19: BioNTech confident its vaccine will be effective against new strain in UK

BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin on December 21 said that it was “highly likely” that COVID-19 vaccine co-developed by his company would be effective against mutated strain detected in UK. While speaking on Bild TV, Sahin said that his company would investigate new mutation in coming days. He also added that German firm could adopt vaccine if necessary in six weeks. 

Countries across globe have shut ir borders to Britain due to fears about highly infectious new coronavirus strain. In a televised statement, Sahin informed that variant detected in United Kingdom has nine mutations, rar than just one as is usually common. However, he also added that immune response by vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech can deal with new variant. 

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Sahin said, “Scientifically, it is highly likely that immune response by this vaccine also can deal with new virus variant. But if needed, in principle beauty of messenger techlogy is that we can directly start to engineer a vaccine which completely mimics this new mutation -- we could be able to provide a new vaccine technically within six weeks”. 

Furr, he also voiced confidence that vaccine co-developed by his firm would be efficient because it contains more than 1,000 ami acids, and only nine of m have changed, meaning 99 per cent of protein is still same. Sahin said that currently tests are being run on variant and result are expected in two weeks. 

“We have scientific confidence that vaccine might protect but we will only kw it if experiment is done... we will publish data as soon as possible,” he said. 

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EU authorises Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine

new strain of coronavirus has been detected in countries across Europe. With over 1,000 cases of variant discovered in UK, scientists are puzzled to determine if variant, named as VUI-202012/01, falls into which category or if it represents an increased health risk especially when some nations began administering COVID-19 vaccines among people. On Monday, EMA’s head of Anti-infectives and Vaccines Marco Cavaleri said that it was “really too early” to say if new variant of virus would compromise strength of vaccine, but that “for time being we are t worried”. 

Meanwhile, Sahin’s comments come shortly after European Union cleared regulatory hurdles for vaccine to be rolled out after Christmas. EU said that first phase of bloc’s mass iculation programme will begin later this week. European Medicines ncy (EMA) said that it was recommending shot be licensed for use in people over 16 years of with some exceptions.

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