Europe can have immunity by summer’s end: BioNTech CEO
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Europe can achieve herd immunity by the end of the summer with four vaccines approved by European health authorities, Ugur Sahin, a Turkish-German scientist and CEO of the BioNTech, said on Friday after his visit to the Turkish embassy in Berlin.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency after receiving the Great Cross with Star of the Order of Merit, the highest honor in Germany for developing the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, Sahin said, a new wave of a pandemic caused by the UK variant of COVID-19 will stay for several months.
“UK variant is infecting faster and more efficiently and. And we need to really work on all levels. Everyone has to try to protect him or herself and thereby protect the others. This is the only way to control the pandemic,” said Sahin.
“This this new wave will stay with us, I believe, for several months. It is important that we avoid as many as possible infections in parallel, continue with the rollout of the vaccines,” he added.
Sahin said they have achieved their goal to deliver a safe and effective vaccine which they din less than one year.
Ugur Sahin (L) and his wife Ozlem Tureci (R), the founders of the Mainz-based corona vaccine developer Biontech at an Axel Springer Award ceremony in Berlin, Germany, 18 March 2021. The winners are being honored ‘for their entrepreneurial spirit, innovative strength and sense of social responsibility’. The Axel Springer Award honors outstanding personalities who are innovative in a special way, create and change markets, shape culture and at the same time face up to their social responsibility. EPA-EFE/BERND VON JUTRCZENKA / POOL
“Our goal for 2021, is to ensure that we can supply as many as possible doses. So, we started to deliver to more than 60 countries. And we have a lot of work to do still,” he added.
Responding to a question on applying two different jabs because of supply shortages and some countries’ decisions on halting vaccination with AstaZeneca jabs, Sahin said that should be possible but it needs to be tested.
“The UK started testing. I expect that this will be published very soon. I expected to safety is not impacted. AstraZeneca vaccine followed by mRNA vaccine, that should work,” he added.
Sahin went on to say that, BioNTech and Turkey made a deal for 4.5 million doses to be delivered at the end of March and the company and Turkish government continue discussions on possibility to deliver more doses in the second half of 2021.
“And we had a number of good discussions with TUBITAK about cancer projects. And this is still ongoing discussions with scientists from TUBITAK side and scientists from our side. And I’m confident that this will also come. It will not come now, it because we are now at moment, dealing with the pandemic situation. But it is something we are definitely interested in later on,” he said.
Germany’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier conferred Turkish scientists Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci with the country’s highest award, the Order of Merit, on Friday for inventing the world’s first effective vaccine against COVID-19, at a ceremony held at the Bellevue Palace, which was also attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Great Cross with Star of the Order of Merit, which was given to the Turkish-German scientist couple, is one of the country’s most prominent honors to pay tribute to the individuals for their great services to the nation.
Both Sahin and Tureci were born to immigrant parents from Turkey who moved to Germany in the 1960s, and after studying medicine at the university, they have built successful careers in the fields of cancer immunology, molecular biology and mRNA vaccine technology.
The pharmaceutical company BioNTech, which the couple founded in 2008, managed to develop the world’s first effective coronavirus vaccine together with its US partner Pfizer.
