By Ludwig Burger and Patricia Weiss
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – BioNTech and Pfizer’s established COVID-19 vaccine will likely offer strong protection against any severe disease from the new Omicron virus variant, BioNTech’s Chief Executive told Reuters, even as the biotech firm protectively makes a bolt for an adapted version of the shot.
Lab tests are currently underway over the next two weeks analysing the blood of people who had two or three doses of BioNTech’s Comirnaty vaccine to see if antibodies found in that blood inactivate Omicron.
Sahin told Reuters he expects results to show some loss of vaccine protection against mild and moderate disease due to Omicron but the extent of that loss was hard to predict.
(Editing by Madeline Chambers)
