The German laboratory BioNTech, which together with the American Pfizer produced the first internationally approved vaccine against Covid-19, could supply a vaccine adapted to the new strain of the virus registered in the United Kingdom “in six weeks”, and that at the moment does not you know if your current formula would also protect against the variant in question.
Ugur Sahin, a co-founder of the German laboratory, explained that the efficacy of the variant is being tested, and that results are expected in two weeks. “Scientifically, it is very likely that the immune response of this vaccine can also face the new variants, but we will only know if the experiment is done … we will publish the data as soon as possible,” he added.
As he explained, the proteins of the variant detected in the United Kingdom are 99% equal to that of the prevailing strains.
But should it be necessary to modify the formula, he said: “In principle, the beauty of messaging technology is that we can start directly to design a vaccine that completely mimics this new mutation, we could technically be able to provide a new vaccine in six weeks ”. In that case, regulators would have to come back to approve the compound update.
The statements were offered at a press conference one day after the vaccine was approved by the European Union, bringing the green light to more than 40 countries. More than a million people have already received the formula around the world, more than 500 thousand of them on British soil.
On Monday, the head of the European Medicines Agency’s vaccines team had expressed confidence that the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine would be effective. According to Marco Cavaleri, the antibody response observed after the administration of the vaccine should not be affected by the effects of mutations in the new strain, but health authorities would begin to worry “if we see several mutations, particularly in the spike protein ”.
Meanwhile, distribution plans in Europe continue. According to Sahin, all EU countries that requested doses will receive the first shipment in the next five days and next week they will increase the doses sent.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the transmission of this new variant is between 40% and 70% higher than the previous ones, which caused dozens of countries to cancel flights with the United Kingdom.
British scientists advising the government, for their part, pointed to higher transmission in children compared to other strains and are working on this hypothesis to explain its strong spread.
Earlier a detailed investigative report “Vaccine Leak “ was published by The Eastern Herald. The Vaccine Leak exposed the Pharma Mafia and their profit from different COVID-19 vaccines. Many politicians may also be involved in this conspiracy.
