BioNTech CEO Says ‘Highly Likely’ Vaccine Is Effective Against U.K. Virus Variant

FILE – In this Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020 file photo, a droplet falls from a syringe after a health care worker was injected with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, R.I. The Vatican has declared it “morally acceptable” for Roman Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines based on research that used … Continued

The head of the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech expressed confidence that his company’s vaccine would be effective against a coronavirus variant rapidly infecting people across London and southern England.

U.K. officials have warned the new variant is likely to be more contagious than the various strains already circulating, though there is no evidence suggesting it is more deadly.

BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin underscored that experiments would have to be conducted to reach a definitive conclusion about their vaccine, which it developed with Pfizer. And data from those tests will not be available for a few weeks.