New Delhi: The chief executive of German pharmaceutical company BioNTech on Tuesday said that its vaccine which is developed for COVID-19 will also work against the new strain of coronavirus detected in the United Kingdom(UK), however, the company said that further studies are required to be completely sure.
BioNTech’s company has developed a vaccine for coronavirus with U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
As per the reports, the new strain of the virus was found in September. Since then, the UK, especially in London, has seen a rise in the spread of disease in the lab.
This new strain has sparked panic worldwide because if experts of the UK are to believed, the new strain is believed to be 70% more infectious and transmissible. As a result, several countries including India, Europe have restricted travel from the UK.
“We don’t know at the moment if our vaccine is also able to protect against this new variant,” Ugur Sahin told a news conference the day after the vaccine was approved for use in the European Union. “But scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variants,” reported The Indian Express.
Ugur Sahin also said that the proteins on the UK new strain are 99% equivalent to on the overarching strains, and along these lines, BioNTech has “scientific confidence” that its vaccine will be powerful.
He said, “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.”
BioNTech’s vaccine, developed together with U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer, is authorized for use in more than 45 countries including the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US), and the European Union (EU).