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Tuesday, December 22, 2020, 11:13 a.m.
BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin is convinced that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by his company in collaboration with Pfizer is effective against a mutation of the coronavirus that has appeared in Great Britain, but if necessary, a new one can be developed formula in six weeks.
As countries around the world closed their borders with Britain on Monday amid fears of a highly contagious new strain of coronavirus, Sahin said the German company would investigate the mutation in the coming days and monitor the problem, but said the vaccine . will provide security.
In the unlikely event that the mutation is resistant to the vaccine: “Technically, we could provide a new vaccine in six weeks,” Sahin said.
The BioNTech founder’s reassuring tone about his mutation, which was discovered in Britain, was echoed by the World Health Organization, which emphasized that this was a normal part of the evolution of a pandemic.
Sahin said she hadn’t been vaccinated yet, but will do so soon as it’s more important that her company’s employees get vaccinated so they can continue to do the job.
12.5 million doses of the vaccine will be delivered to the European Union by the end of the year.
The German company also announced that it will ship 12.5 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the European Union by the end of the year.
All 27 EU member states that need doses of vaccines will have them within five days, the company’s chief operating officer, Sean Maret, said at a news conference as companies rushed to deliver the first doses after their vaccine was approved yesterday. The United States.
That’s more than half of the quotas expected to be shipped to the United States before the end of the year, he added.
As two doses are required over three weeks, initial deliveries to the European Union will be enough to vaccinate 6.25 million people.
BionTech plans to begin production of the vaccine in February at its new plant in Marburg, Germany, CFO Zirk Petting said at the same press conference.
The plant, which was purchased in September, is expected to have an annual production capacity of up to 750 million doses.
