OUR vaccine can bash the (corona)virus over the head, BioNTech chief executive Uğur Şahin told The Guardian today.
On Monday, German company BioNTech and American pharmaceutical firm Pfizer announced that their jointly developed vaccine against Covid-19 had outperformed expectations, and was 90% effective in preventing people from succumbing to Covid-19.
“If the question is whether we can stop this pandemic with this vaccine, then my answer is: yes, because I believe that even protection only from symptomatic infections will have a dramatic effect,” Şahin was quoted as saying.
However, he doesn’t rule out that Covid-19 jabs would need to be “topped up” annually.
Şahin told the UK paper that those who received the vaccine – two injections in the arm three weeks apart – would be immune from the coronavirus for at least a year.
“Studies of Covid-19 patients have shown that those with a strong immune response still have that response after six months. I could imagine we could be safe for at least a year,” he said.
Founded in 2008 by scientists and married couple Şahin and Özlem Türeci, as well as the Austrian oncologist Christoph Huber, BioNTech used an experimental method known as mRNA to create the vaccine, reported the paper.
This method allowed the production process to shorten by almost three months.
Working with Pfizer and with the assistance of regulatory authorities, the development process took 10 months, instead of the years it normally takes to develop a vaccine. – The Vibes, November 13, 2020
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