You may need to receive your BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine every year

“If the question is whether we can stop the epidemic with this vaccine, my answer is yes,” Ugur Sahin, executive director of German BioNTech, told The Guardian. Based on the results of Phase III clinical trials to date, the vaccine, developed in conjunction with Pfizer in the United States, appears to be 90 percent effective, exceeding preliminary expectations.

It doesn’t even follow that it also provides protection against asymptomatic infections, and we won’t have an answer to that in the next year. In any case, according to Sahin, they can also have a “dramatic effect” by preventing symptomatic illnesses. He said that until results came out on Monday, he didn’t rule out that the virus could still find its way into cells and cause disease.

For now, we cannot be sure that the vaccine can prevent transmission of the infection, but due to the 90 percent result, Sahin is confident in that too. In about three weeks, we’ll see if the vaccine affects members of different age groups differently, and we still don’t have a clear picture of the role of ethnicity.

It is also a question of how long the vaccine provides protection. Sahin said that test subjects with strong immune systems proved to be protected even after six months. “I imagine it will take at least a year.” That is, it may easily be necessary to repeat the administration of the vaccine every year.

Sahin, also of Turkish descent, founded BioNTech in 2008 with his wife, Özlem Türeci, who was primarily involved in immunotherapy for cancer treatment. A vaccine is an mRNA-based vaccine that does not kill or attenuate a virus, it contains only a key part of the viral inheritance. That is, it cannot cause an infection, but it may be enough to provoke an immune response. The foundations of the technology were laid in part by a Hungarian biologist, Katalin Karikó, in the United States, who is also an employee of BioNTech today.

Donald Trump accused the companies involved in the project of deliberately withholding the results until the end of the US presidential election. Sahin said this is not true, he also found out about them from the CEO of Pfizer at eight o’clock on Sunday night and it would have been unethical if it had not been made public. He and his wife celebrated the news. “We sat down, we talked, we had tea. It was good to be relieved. “

As a result of the news, BioNTech shares have been fired, but Sahin says these are just numbers for now, they have yet to figure out how to use the money. “Usually, whoever creates something new wants to repeat it.”

He was also asked if his wife could be an example for immigrants living in Germany, which he said he did not want. Instead, work must be done to ensure equal opportunities for all.

“All studies show that intelligence is evenly distributed among different ethnic groups. As a society, we must ask ourselves the question: how can we give everyone a chance? It is a coincidence that I come from an immigrant family. It could be German or Spanish with the same force ”.