| | | BioNTech CEO tells CNN the vaccine could be
adjusted to better combat new Covid-19 variant
From CNN’s Fred Pleitgen
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine could be adjusted to better combat
the new variant of the Coronavirus, BioNTech’s CEO Ugur Sahin
told CNN’s Fred Pleitgen in an interview on Tuesday.
"We should not forget that we have still the opportunity, if required,
to adjust the vaccine exactly to this new virus variant, if this is
needed," Sahin said.
"I don't think that this is needed. But if it would be needed, there's
a technical possibility to do that."
Sahin told CNN that BioNTech is currently evaluating how effective
the vaccine is against the recently discovered variant of the virus,
which has caused dozens of countries to shut down travel to the
United Kingdom. Sahin said he has "scientific confidence" that the
vaccine will still work.
"There's a high likelihood that the vaccine response will be
able also to inactivate this virus, because you have to consider
that even though nine amino acids are changed in this protein,
99 percent of the protein is not changed," Sahin said, adding
that BioNTech has already detected part of the immune
response was not affected by the mutation.
"What we already did is we evaluated the sites where we have
observed T cell responses against spike protein, and we see that
almost all sites that we have seen T cell responses are still conserved.
And so that is a good message. That means at least one component
of the immune system will not be affected by this mutation," Sahin
added.
On Monday Pfizer/BioNTech received approval for their vaccine from
the EU’s regulatory body, the European Medicines Agency. Sahin
told CNN the vaccine would be rolled out ASAP and that the
companies are already working on ways to speed up production.
"We are evaluating if we could intensify the production at the Pfizer
sites and intensify the production at the Mainz sites. So there are
multiple things, which are ongoing."
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