BioNTech co-founder and a German Oncologist, Ugur Sahin on Wednesday, has admitted that the vaccine that his company jointly developed with Pfizer works against the Indian variant of Covid-19.
According to Sahin, investigations revealed that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine works against the B.1.617 COVID-19 variant in India.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed by BioNTech, a German Company and Pfizer, an American Company.
The BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine was the first to win authorisation and has since been deployed to several countries.
According to Sahin, after series of tests conducted in India, it was discovered that the vaccine works against some victims of the B.1.617 variant in India.
In his words, “We are still testing the Indian variant, but the Indian variant has mutations that we have already tested for and which our vaccine works against, so I am confident,” said Sahin.
“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.
India is currently facing another spike of Covid-19 cases. There are also fears that a new variant could be the reason for the surging new cases of the virus.
According to the data obtained from the Union Health Ministry of India, a total of 360,960 COVID-19 cases, recording fresh fatalities of 3,293, was recorded on Wednesday. The total tally of India’s COVID-19 cases stands at 17,997,267 with 201,187 deaths, as of Wednesday.
The World Health Organization has said the B.1.617 variant of Covid-19 first found in India has been detected in at least 17 countries.
