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Corona vaccines: Adjustments may be necessary due to virus mutants
Photo: REUTERS
According to experts, the current corona vaccines can be adapted relatively quickly to possible new virus variants.
The vaccines could then contain either a new or an additional component, said Klaus Cichutek, President of the Paul Ehrlich Institute (Pei) responsible for vaccines in a press briefing from the Science Media Center.
There are proposals from the EU Commission for legal regulations.
"If they get through, they'll be such that you don't need a new license here."
For an adapted vaccine to be approved, blood tests must show that the agent against the new variant is about as effective as the original vaccine against the conventional virus.
The production of the new vaccine must also be exactly the same as that of the starting product.
Large studies with several thousand participants - which were a prerequisite for admission - are no longer required.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently compared the planned approval process with that for flu vaccines, which also have to be adjusted every year.
At least for mRNA vaccines, a changeover is possible within six weeks and the production of millions of doses within a further six weeks, said Cichutek.
In that time, the exam could begin.
When that will start is not yet foreseeable.
The approval of new vaccines will be necessary "if the effectiveness of the existing vaccines that are used actually falls sharply and you hear a sharp drop," said Cichutek.
In the opinion of Ugur Sahin, CEO of the pharmaceutical company Biontech, a heavily modified vaccine is not always necessary; better results can also be achieved by increasing the effect.
According to Cichutek, it is also conceivable that different vaccines could be used one after the other on a person being vaccinated.
"We have very good tools to keep pace with the pandemic," said Marylyn Addo from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and emphasized: "If there are no major infections, there are fewer mutations." That is why it is important that the vaccines are also distributed outside the industrialized nations.
"Otherwise the problem will come up to us because it will just be registered again."
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wbr / dpa
