Drugmakers Expect Tests to Confirm Vaccines Effective Against New Coronavirus Variant

Reuters reports that at least four drugmakers are confident that their COVID-19 vaccines will be effective against the new fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus proliferating in Britain, and are conducting tests that should provide confirmation in a few weeks. BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said its messenger RNA vaccine, developed with Pfizer, should still work well. Moderna, CureVac, and AstraZeneca also expect their vaccines to protect against the variant. "Scientifically it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine can also deal with this virus variant," Sahin added. He said it will take about two more weeks of research and data collection before a definitive answer comes. "The vaccine contains more than 1,270 amino acids, and only nine of them are changed in the mutated virus," Sahin explained. "That means that 99 percent of the protein is still the same."