COVID-19 VACCINES: BioNTech CEO believes his company's vaccine is effective against new Covid-19 variants.

Speaking on December 22, 2020 to the German media, CEO of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin expressed confidence that the vaccine his company created in partnership with American company Pfizer, is able to inoculate against the new strains of the coronavirus that have surfaced in the UK, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and also South Africa.

Sahin revealed that the UK variant's proteins are 99 per cent the same as the prevailing strains, and therefore BioNTech has “scientific confidence” that its vaccine will be effective. 

The new variants have sparked worldwide concern as they appear to be more contagious than the previous strains of the virus. While the UK variant does not appear to cause a more serious illness, the South African strain has been noted to cause more severe symptoms for persons who are unfortunate to catch it and is spreading more rapidly among younger people.

CEO Ugur Sahin said:

“We don't know at the moment if our vaccine is also able to provide protection against this new [UK] variant... But scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variants.

"But we will know it only if the experiment is done and we will need about two weeks from now to get the data... The likelihood that our vaccine works ... is relatively high."

Sahin however noted that should the vaccine need to be adjusted for the new variants, the company could do so in about 6 weeks, though regulators might have to approve the changes before the shots can be used. 

It is not without societal cost since adjusting the vaccine's composition at this critical stage, after receiving approval from 45 countries including the EU, the UK and the US, would be a blow for the rollout of immunization campaigns and the efforts to rein in a pandemic that has so far killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. According to a New York Times article, more than 614,000 Americans have already received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The companies submitted data to European regulators showing the vaccine, which goes by the brand name COMIRNATY in Europe, is 95 per cent effective in preventing infection with COVID-19.

"All countries across the EU that have requested doses will receive them in the next five days, the very initial supply, and that will be followed up next week with further supplies," said Sean Marett, BioNTech's chief commercial officer.

The company is distributing batches of vaccine across the 27-nation bloc by truck and plane from a Pfizer plant in Belgium. The EU has ordered 200 million doses of the vaccine, with an option to take 100 million more.

Marett said BioNTech is examining ways to deliver more than the 1.3 billion doses currently planned worldwide for 2021.

"As BioNTech we're always interested in looking at facilities that could help boost up production next year," he told The Associated Press, citing the recent acquisition of a plant in Germany from Novartis. "We would be looking to do very quick transactions if we can."

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

"This virus is not going to go away," Marett told The AP. "It'll be there at least for the next decade, and therefore it's important that if people so choose, they should get vaccinated."

It is however unclear how long immunity from the vaccine lasts.

"It's quite possible that we will need to give a booster injection," Marett said. "So a repeat injection, maybe as frequently as one year, maybe every two years. We don't know yet." 

Of note, the flu shot is administered once a year. 

Several EU countries have said they plan to start vaccinating on Sunday, December 27. Germany's health minister, Jens Spahn, said he expects the country to receive more than 1.3 million doses by the end of this year.

His country is among the European countries that have banned flights from the UK because of the new variant there.

A leading German virologist who was initially sceptical about reports that the UK strain was more contagious voiced concern after seeing further data. Christian Drosten, a professor of virology at Berlin's Charite hospital, tweeted that "unfortunately it doesn't look good."

"We want to avoid for as long as we can that a possibly dangerous virus variant spreads to continental Europe," the health minister said.

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References

New York Times. 'At Least 614,000 People in the U.S. Have Received the Covid-19 Vaccine'. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html