The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Omicron variant: "After the third injection, our vaccine seems to provide 70% or 75% protection", assures the CEO of BioNTech

2021-12-20T12:06:18.455Z


The head of the German laboratory, however, recognizes that the vaccine produced with Pfizer will not be enough to stop the Covid pandemic in the


The spread of the Omicron variant across the world still leaves many unanswered questions for scientists.

Among them is that, more worrying, the potential resistance of the variant to existing vaccines.

Should we be worried?

In an interview published this Monday in Le Monde, Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, the German laboratory behind the messenger RNA vaccine produced with Pfizer, is reassuring.

"Real-life data from Great Britain and South Africa provide us with reassuring information," says the pharmaceutical leader.

"Preliminary data from the United Kingdom pointed to an efficacy of around 70% after the third dose and around 20% to 40% after the second dose," he confirmed, while "waiting for the next ones. data ”.

"Triples vaccinated can transmit the disease"

Another major unknown, that relating to the loss of effectiveness over time of the precious serum.

Because after only three months, a 25% drop in the effectiveness of the vaccine against Omicron would have been observed, according to a German team.

Data which however deserves to be consolidated by real life data, insists the CEO of BioNTech.

“It is obvious that we are far from the 95% effectiveness that we had obtained against the initial virus.

However, after the third injection our vaccine seems to provide 70% or 75% protection against any type of disease, which is still a good result for a vaccine in general and I think we will be well beyond that for severe forms. », Assured Ugur Sahin.

Read alsoVariant Omicron: will vaccination be enough in the face of the surge?

No excess of optimism, however. Because the leader of the pharmaceutical industry recognizes that the vaccine will not be enough to stop the Covid pandemic on its own. "We must be aware that even triple vaccinated are likely to transmit the disease, and that we will have to test them, especially in the entourage of vulnerable people", he warned, recalling the respect of "measures of protection, especially this winter ”.

In passing, the CEO recalled that the laboratory has embarked on the design of a vaccine specially adapted to the variant, using the spike protein of Omicron.

The process will be swift, he argues: "We should be able to deliver our first suitable vaccines to Omicron in March, subject to regulatory approval."

Still, some scientists, like Anthony Fauci, the White House adviser on Covid, believe that the antibodies produced by the booster dose of current vaccines should be sufficient.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2021-12-20

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.