(AFP): The co-founder of BioNTech today (Tuesday) has asserted that it was ‘highly likely’ that its COVID-19 vaccine would work against the mutated strain detected in Britain, but it could also adapt the vaccine if necessary in six weeks.
In a statement, co-founder of BioNTech Ugur Sahin said, “Scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variant.”
“However, if needed, in principle the beauty of the messenger technology is that we can directly start to engineer a vaccine which completely mimics this new mutation. We could be able to provide a new vaccine technically within six weeks,” he added.
The scientist further said that the variant detected in Britain has nine mutations, rather than just one as is usually common. However, he voiced confidence that the vaccine developed with Pfizer would be efficient because it “contains more than 1,000 amino acids, and only nine of them have changed.
He said tests are being run on the variant, with results expected in two weeks. “We have scientific confidence that the vaccine might protect but we will only know it if the experiment is done. We will publish the data as soon as possible,” he added.
The new strain was identified in southeastern England in September and has been spreading in the area ever since. Earlier on Saturday, the WHO tweeted that it was in close contact with UK officials on the new COVID19 virus variant and promised to update governments and the public as more is learned.
