it is “not yet” necessary to adapt the Pfizer vaccine to the variants

The anti-Covid vaccine from Pfizer / BioNTech laboratories has “not yet” need to be adapted to the new variants of the coronavirus in circulation, assured at a press conference Monday the boss of BioNTech, recommending instead a “third dose”. “It is possible that in the next 6 to 12 months, a variant will emerge that requires adaptation of the vaccine, but this is not yet the case,” said Ugur Sahin. “Making a decision now might turn out to be wrong, if in three or six months another variant dominates,” he added.

According to him, such a decision should only be made if the “existing vaccine is not effective or not optimal”. However, “for the moment, we know that a reminder with the basic formula is quite sufficient,” said Ugur Sahin. As a result, “the best approach to deal with this situation is to continue with a booster dose” in order to boost the immunity granted by the vaccine, he added. Pfizer and BioNTech have also mentioned in early July “encouraging results” of trials for a third dose and plan to seek authorization for a third dose of their vaccine in the United States and Europe.

Already 7.3 billion euros in turnover

Ugur Sahin was speaking during the presentation of BioNTech’s second quarter financial results. Since the beginning of the year, this German laboratory has already recorded 7.3 billion euros in turnover, against 69.4 million euros over the same period last year, before the development of the serum against Covid-19. This huge increase is “mainly due to the rapid increase in the supply of (against) Covid-19 vaccine all over the world,” he explained.

BioNTech has indeed delivered more than a billion doses since the start of the year and expects to reach 2.2 billion by the end of 2021. With its vaccine against Covid-19 alone, BioNTech hopes to achieve a figure business of nearly 16 billion euros this year. Forecasts considerably raised: in May the laboratory forecast only 9.8 billion euros of annual turnover.