The results are expected "at the latest in two weeks".
The German laboratory BioNTech, allied with Pfizer, announces this Friday that it expects before mid-December the first results of studies which will make it possible to determine whether the new variant detected in South Africa is capable of escaping vaccine protection, said a spokesperson.
"We immediately launched studies on the B.1.1.529 variant" which "clearly differs from the variants already known because it has additional mutations on the spike protein", characteristic of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, explained this carrier. word.
"Pfizer and BioNTech prepared several months ago to adjust their vaccine in less than six weeks and deliver the first doses in 100 days" if a variant was found to be resistant.
"It can go very quickly"
While this new variant detected in South Africa worries scientists, the WHO assures that it will take "several weeks" to understand its level of transmissibility and virulence.
"We do not expect to see it arrive immediately in France, but it can go very quickly", tells Parisian Etienne Simon-Lorière, head of the RNA virus evolutionary genomics unit at the Institut Pasteur .
A hundred sequences of this variant, that is to say positive cases passed under the very fine radars of scientists, have been identified in total in three countries: in Bostwana, Hong Kong, and especially in South Africa.
In several regions of this country, new positive cases are increasing “exponentially” and the share of B.1.1529 among sequenced positive tests is increasing very sharply.
