BioNTech chief says they are capable of providing a new vaccine 'in six weeks' for the COVID-19 virus variant

• BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said that it is highly likely that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine will work against the new virus strain, and that they can adapt it in six weeks if necessary.
• Sahin added that the current vaccine would most likely work for the mutant COVID-19 strain as “as the new form of COVID-19 shares 99% of the proteins with the previous iterations.”
• On December 19, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson had spoken about the new variant of the Sars-Cov-2, which scientists believed was “70% transmissible”

BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, the man behind the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, has said that it is highly likely that their vaccine will be efficient against the emerging mutant coronavirus strain, and if needed they can adapt it further in six weeks, according to news agency AFP.

Sahin said that the current vaccine would most likely work for the mutant COVID-19 strain as “as the new form of COVID-19 shares 99% of the proteins with the previous iterations”.

However, according to the AFP report he said that in a scenario that it doesn’t they can create a new vaccine soon. “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 said.

Sahin also added that they would need more data to understand the implications of the mutant COVID-19 strain.

On December 19, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson had spoken about the new variant of the Sars-Cov-2 which scientists believed was “70% transmissible”. Following the announcement, an immediate lockdown was announced in London.

Currently, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the only approved vaccine in the UK. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) which approved the use of the vaccine in the country said that it could work against the new mutant strain as well. “At this moment there is no evidence to suggest this vaccine will not work against the new variant,” said EMA chief Emer Cooke.

Indian government has suspended all flights from the United Kingdom after reports that the country has seen a new strain of COVID-19, which has been termed as a "super spreader". Nine passengers from the UK who have arrived in India have tested positive for COVID-19 and their samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology to test for the mutant strain.


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