Reuters :
BioNTech has claimed the Covid-19 vaccine it developed with Pfizer should be roughly as effective against the new coronavirus variant first detected in India as it has been shown to be against the South African variant.
The company on Thursday said in a statement Chief Executive Ugur Sahin felt encouraged by recent findings in a scientific paper based on blood analysis of vaccinated individuals, which showed that the antibodies elicited by the vaccine were able to neutralise the Indian variant.
Since the blood tests on the variant that was first detected in South Africa had shown similar results, promising real-world data on the vaccine’s effectiveness against the South African variant of about 75% led him to believe that its actual effectiveness against the Indian variant “might be in the same range.”
“So far we’ve had the chance to test our vaccine against more than 30 variants of the virus. It has proven effective against mutations so far,” Sahin said earlier, speaking on Turkish television. Sahin, a German scientist with Turkish parents, spoke in Turkish after virtually attending the Turkish government’s science council meeting.
