Vaccine Works Against Mutant Virus – NRK Urix – Foreign News & Documentaries



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– There is a high probability that the coronavirus vaccine will also work against the mutated virus that has been discovered in the UK, but we need to do more testing, says Ugur Sahin from German drug maker BioNTech today.

Spreads quickly

There are many indications that the new variant of the coronavirus is much more contagious. What experts are trying to find out now is how contagious it is.

There is a fear that this variant will become dominant in no time. So far, only a few cases of the virus have been detected in Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and probably Germany. Besides the UK.

The new virus is very different from the viruses seen so far. Typically, researchers can point out that a virus is a direct descendant of another virus. They can describe the virus family in many ways in many generations backwards. But not with this variant.

– A virus that has undergone so many changes before being discovered is so far unique in this pandemic, writes a group of researchers for virological.org.

You can change the vaccine

Despite this, the manufacturers of the vaccines that have been approved by most countries so far are confident that their vaccine will help.

– The good thing about the new technology is that we can also adapt the vaccine to the new mutated viruses in six weeks, says Sahin, who helped start the German company.

According to Sahin, they have seen that the British variant has nine mutations. It’s a high number, but trust the vaccine.

– The vaccine contains more than 1000 antibodies and only nine of them have changed. This means that 99 percent of the proteins are the same.

But he emphasizes that they will know more in two weeks when they have completed several tests.

The Pfizer-Biontech vaccine was formally approved last night for use in the EU and Norway

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