BioNTech SE said that the Covid-19 vaccine it developed with Pfizer should be roughly as effective against the new coronavirus variant first detected in India as it is against the South African variant.
The company said in a statement Chief Executive UgurSahin felt encouraged by recent findings in a scientific paper based on blood analysis of vaccinated individuals, which showed that the antibodies elicited by the vaccine were able to neutralize the Indian variant.
Since the blood tests on the variant that was first detected in South Africa had shown similar results, promising real-world data on the vaccine’s effectiveness against the South African variant of about 75% led him to believe that its actual effectiveness against the Indian variant “might be in the same range”.