With the first vaccinations against COVID-19 due to commence in Germany on Sunday, BioNTech founder Uğur Şahin has said that he is confident the jab will work against the new strain of the virus that has been detected in the UK. 

BioNTech testing vaccine against new covid mutation

“We have already tested the vaccine against around 20 other virus variants with other mutations,” Şahin said on Monday. “The immune response produced by our vaccine has always inactivated all forms of the virus.” 

Şahin added that the latest mutation of the virus was a little stronger. “We now have to test it experimentally,” he said. “This will take about two weeks. However, we are confident that this will not significantly alter the mechanism of action.” He told ZDF that at the moment all findings indicated that the effectiveness [of the vaccine] would not be impaired by the new variant. “And of course that would be very, very good news.” 

The news of a new coronavirus variant - which has been spreading rapidly southeast England for several months now - is causing widespread unrest. It was first detected in September, according to British health authorities, and is thought to be much more contagious than the previous known form. Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific advisor to the British government, said that by December the new virus strain was already responsible for more than 60 percent of infections in London. 

However, Şahin explained that the antigen used in his company’s vaccine consists of more than 1.270 amino acids. Of these, only nine have mutated in the new covid strain - less than 1 percent. “Our vaccine sees the whole protein and causes multiple immune responses,” he said. “As a result, we have so many docking sites that it is difficult for the virus to escape.”

First vaccine delivery expected in Germany on Saturday

On Monday evening, the EU commission granted conditional marketing authorisation to the BioNTech / Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, a few hours after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) gave the vaccine the green light - meaning that nothing now stands in the way of the start of mass vaccinations in the EU. 

BioNTech and Pfizer announced on Monday evening that things would now start to move very quickly: “Deliveries will start immediately and will take place gradually over the course of 2020 and 2021 in order to ensure a fair distribution of the vaccines in accordance with the terms of the contract in the EU,” the companies said in a statement. 

Germany should receive its first batch of vaccines on Saturday, meaning that inoculations could begin as soon as Sunday, December 27. Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said that a total of more than 1,3 million vaccine doses should be delivered to the federal states by the end of the year.