The German pharmaceutical company BioNTech is confident that its coronavirus vaccine will work against the mutated strain detected in Britain. “Scientifically, it is very likely that the immune response of this vaccine can also cope with the new virus variant,” said Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech. However, “we do not know at the moment if our vaccine can also provide protection against this new variant,” he added.
Sahin said that the proteins of the UK variant are 99% the same as those of the predominant strains, and therefore BioNTech is “scientifically confident” that their vaccine will be effective.
“But we will know only if the experiment is done and we will need about two weeks from now to get the data,” he said. “The probability that our vaccine will work … is relatively high.”
He also claimed that, if necessary, the pharmaceutical company could also provide a vaccine to combat the new strain of coronavirus in six weeks. “In principle, the beauty of messaging technology is that we can directly start designing a vaccine that completely mimics this new mutation; we might be able to technically provide a new vaccine in six weeks,” he said, according to the news agency. AFP.
Last week a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 was found in the UK. “In recent days, thanks to our world-class genomic capabilities, we have identified a new variant of the coronavirus, which may be associated with the more rapid spread in southern England,” said UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock , to the House of Commons on December 14.
Public Health England (PHE) announced that 1,108 cases with this variant had been identified as of December 13. Outside of Britain, nine cases of the new strain have been reported in Denmark, as well as one case in the Netherlands and one in Australia, according to the WHO.
BioNTech teamed up with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus. Its experimental vaccine has been licensed for use in more than 45 countries, including Great Britain, the United States, and the European Union.
Moderna is also testing its coronavirus vaccine to see if it works against the new mutated version of the virus. CNN reported. “Based on data to date, we expect Moderna vaccine-induced immunity to protect against recently described variants in the UK,” Moderna said in a statement, adding: “We will conduct additional testing in the coming weeks to confirm this expectation.” .
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