COVID-19 vaccines have to be adapted because the Omicron variant could more easily infect even vaccinated people, Ugur Sahin, CEO of the German biotechnological company BioNTech, said on Friday.
Omicron is an "escape variant," which means that it "might be able to infect vaccinated people," Sahin said at the Reuters Next conference. However, BioNTech understands that "infected people who have been vaccinated will still be protected against severe disease."
Thirty-two of the Omicron variant's 50 mutations identified so far affect the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter and replicate in human cells. Most vaccines target this mechanism and researchers believe that immune defenses may no longer sufficiently recognize the protein due to the high number of mutations.
BioNTech should be able to adapt its COVID-19 vaccine relatively quickly, Sahin said, adding that he had not expected a highly mutant variant such as Omicron to appear until "sometime next year."
BioNTech has already started developing a new vaccine adapted to the Omicron variant. However, the first wave of the Omicron variant could not yet be prevented with the new vaccine, as development to deployment takes around 100 days, Sahin said.
As of early November, BioNTech, together with its partner Pfizer, had delivered more than two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses in over 150 countries and regions worldwide. For 2022, the companies anticipate a production capacity of up to four billion doses.
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