BioNTech Head’s confident vaccination will work on UK Variant

Berlin (AP) – German pharmaceutical company BioNTech is confident its coronavirus vaccine is working against the new version in the UK, but more studies are needed to be absolutely certain, its chief said on Tuesday.

The variant, which was found mainly in London and the south-east of England in recent weeks, has caused worldwide concern due to signs that it could spread more easily. While there is no evidence that it causes more serious illness, a number of countries in Europe and beyond have restricted travel from the UK as a result.

“We do not know at this time whether our vaccine is capable of providing protection against this new variant,” Chief Ugur Sahin told a news conference the day after the vaccine was approved for its use. practice in the European Union. “But scientifically, it is very likely that the immune response of this vaccine may address the new virus variants.”

Sahin said the proteins on the UK variant are 99% the same as the standard variants, so BioNTech has “scientific confidence” that its vaccine will be effective.

“But we will only know if the test is done and we need about two weeks from now to get the data,” he said. “Our vaccine seems to be working … to relatively high. “

If the vaccine needs to be modified for the new variant the company could do so in about 6 weeks, Sahin said, although the changes may have to be approved by regulators before the images can be used. .

It would be a blow to the introduction of vaccine campaigns and the effort to kill the pandemic that has so far killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide.

The BioNTech vaccine, developed in conjunction with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, has been approved for use in more than 45 countries including Britain, the United States and the EU. Hundreds of thousands of people have already experienced the sights.

The companies submitted data to regulators that show the vaccine, which goes by the brand name COMIRNATY in Europe, is 95% effective in preventing infection with COVID-19.

“Every country across the EU that has asked for doses in the next five days will receive the very first supply, and that will be followed by next week with more supply,” said Sean Marett, chief commercial officer. BioNTech.

The company is distributing ultra-cold batches of vaccines throughout the 27-nation block by truck and plane from a Pfizer facility in Belgium. The EU has prescribed 200 million doses of the vaccine, with a choice of an additional 100 million.

Marett said BioNTech is exploring ways to design more than the 1.3 billion doses currently planned for 2021.

“As BioNTech we are always interested in looking at resources that could boost production next year,” he told The Associated Press, announcing the recent acquisition of a plant in Germany. from Novartis. “We would look to get things done very quickly if we could. “

BioNTech expects demand for COVID vaccines to continue in the future.

“This virus is not going to go away,” Marett told the AP. “It will be there at least for the next ten years, so it’s important that if people choose that, they should get the vaccine.”

It is not yet clear how long the immunity to a vaccine lasts.

“It’s very possible that we’ll have to give a booster injection,” Marett said. “So re-injection, maybe as often as a year, maybe every two years. We don’t know yet.”

Several EU countries have said they plan to start vaccination on Sunday. German health minister Jens Spahn said he expects the country to receive more than 1.3 million doses by the end of this year.

Germany is among the European countries that have banned flights from the UK because of the new variety.

“We want to avoid as far as we can that a variety of potentially dangerous viruses are spreading to continental Europe,” Spahn said.

But Lothar Wieler, head of Germany’s national disease control center, said it was very likely that the UK variant was already circulating in Germany.

Wieler, who heads the Robert Koch Institute, said it was common for the genetic material of viruses to change, which can affect their susceptibility.

“It’s not entirely clear whether that’s true with the opposite in England,” Wieler said. “What is clear is that the more widely the viruses spread, the more likely they are to change.”

A leading German skepticist who was initially skeptical about reports raised the strain was much more infectious raising concerns after seeing more data. Christian Drosten, a professor of virology at Charite hospital in Berlin, admitted saying “unfortunately it doesn’t look good.”

But Drosten said: “What is positive is that the movement so far has only increased in areas where the overall incidence was high or rising. So reducing communication will also work against the spread of the shop. “

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Christoph Noelting in Mainz, Germany, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

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