Newsman: The German pharmaceutical company BioNTech said they are confident that its coronavirus vaccine works against the new United Kingdom variant, but further studies are needed to be completely sure, BioNTech’s chief executive Ugur Sahin said Tuesday, that the proteins on the UK variant are 99% the same as on the prevailing strains, and therefore BioNTech has “scientific confidence” that its vaccine will be effective.
BioNTech’s chief executive Ugur Sahin also answered the question that, `Should the vaccine need to be adjusted for the new variant the company could do so in about 6 weeks? Sahin said, regulators might have to approve the changes before the shots can be used.
Sahin said “But we will know it only if the experiment is done and we will need about two weeks from now to get the data,” he said. “The likelihood that our vaccine works … is relatively high.”
However, the Pfizer-BioNTeck covid-19 vaccine’s duration of immunity yet has not been determined as it requires more study to be accurate. Meanwhile US health experts in the field believes that the new strain is may simply not been detected at this point. Director of NIAID and President-elect Biden’s Advisor on covid-19 pandemic, Anthony Fouchi said the new UK covid-19 strain may already be in United States.
The variant, detected mainly in London and the southeast of England in recent weeks, has sparked anxiety worldwide because of signs that it may spread more easily. According to UK Health officials , this new variant is 75 percent more infectious that the current coronavirus.
The company BioNTech is distributing super-cooled batches of vaccine across the 27-nation bloc by truck and plane from a Pfizer plant in Belgium. The EU has ordered 200 million doses of the vaccine, with an option of 100 million more.
