BERLIN: BioNTech co-founder Ugur Sahin on Wednesday voiced confidence that the vaccine that his company jointly developed with Pfizer works against the Indian variant of the coronavirus.
“The vaccine is cleverly built and I’m convinced the bulwark will hold. And if we have to strengthen the bulwark again, then we will do it, that I’m not worried about,” he added. The World Health Organization has said the B.1.617 variant of Covid-19 first found in India had as of Tuesday been detected in “at least 17 countries”.which counts several sub-lineages with slightly different mutations and characteristicsBut so far it has stopped short of declaring it a “variant of concern”, which would have indicated that it is more dangerous than the original version of the virus by, for instance, being more transmissible, deadly or able to dodge vaccine protections.