BioNTech: Can Make Mutation-Beating COVID-19 Vaccine

A new mutated strain of COVID-19 has put countries across the world on high alert. They have shut their borders to Britain on Monday due to fears of the highly infectious new coronavirus strain. But there are still several unanswered questions about the new strain of the virus: Does it make people more sicker? Does it mean that the vaccines won’t work on it?

BioNTech’s co-founder said that it is highly unlikely that its vaccine works against the mutated strain detected in Great Britain. But he added that they can make the mutation-beating coronavirus vaccine if necessary in six weeks.

Ugur Sahin said, “Scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variant. But 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.”

Sahin said the variant detected in Britain has nine mutations, rather than just one as is usually common. But he is confident that the vaccine developed with Pfizer will be efficient. Sahin added that 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.

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