"Biontech" confirms its ability to provide a new vaccine "within 6 weeks" in the event that the virus mutates

A meeting of "World Health" in Europe to discuss the strategy to confront the new strain

America's chief infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci receives the Corona vaccine.

EPA

The European branch of the World Health Organization will hold a meeting for its members, with the aim of discussing strategies to confront the new strain of the emerging corona virus, according to what the organization’s regional director, Hans Kluge, announced Tuesday, while the Biontech laboratory confirmed that it is able to provide a new vaccine “within six weeks” in the event of a change Virus.

In detail, Hans Kluge said, in a tweet, that in response to the new strain spreading in the United Kingdom, the European branch of the World Health Organization will "closely follow the situation", and "will bring together member states to discuss screening strategies, reduce the level of transmission, and enhance communication about risks." Without specifying a date for the meeting.

The European branch of the organization, which includes about 50 countries, including Russia and many former Soviet republics in Central Asia, called on its members on Sunday to strengthen its controls in order to better detect potential cases of the so-called "Foy-202012/01" strain. From the emerging corona virus.

Klug wrote on "Twitter" yesterday, "Limiting travel to contain the infection is wise so that we can obtain better information," but he said that "supplies of basic commodities and the necessary movement must remain possible."

The emergence of a new strain of Corona virus in the United Kingdom, which according to initial analyzes is the most contagious, raises concern all over Europe, but there is no evidence at this stage that this strain causes more dangerous forms of the disease or will resist vaccines, experts say.

And the list of countries that suspend flights coming from the United Kingdom continues to increase, after infections with the new strain were discovered in Britain.

And WHO officials said that the new strain of Corona virus, which caused panic in Britain, was found among people in Australia, Iceland, Italy and the Netherlands, in addition to a few cases in Denmark.

The Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, Mike Ryan, said in a press conference, that although the new strain is spreading more quickly than previously known strains, the transmission of infection is not as fast as measles, mumps and smallpox.

The chief researcher for "Covid-19" at the World Health Organization, Maria Van Kerkhove, said that the new strain that was found in South Africa is similar to the one found in Britain, but the two are not related.

And the officials of the international organization had stated earlier, the day before yesterday, that the new strain of the emerging corona virus is spreading at a faster rate, but it is controllable like the rest of the other known strains of the disease.

"The situation is not out of control, but it cannot be allowed to spread," Mike Ryan said in a press conference, urging countries to implement previously tried and tested health measures.

And Maria Van Kerkhove stated that scientists in Britain are trying to determine to what extent this increase is related to changes in the nature of the virus or to behavioral causes among citizens.

And she emphasized that there is still no evidence that the new strain causes more severe or life-threatening symptoms.

This comes at a time when the head of the German company "Biontec" Ugur Shaheen announced that the laboratory that developed with the American company Pfizer the first vaccine against "Covid-19" was licensed in the world, capable of providing a new vaccine "within six weeks", in case of transformation The virus, as it happened in Britain.

"We are technically able to produce a new vaccine within six weeks," Shaheen said.

He added at a press conference in Mainz in western Germany, the day after the European authorities gave the green light to distribute the vaccine in the European Union: “In principle, the beauty of the messenger RNA technology is that we can start directly designing a vaccine that fully simulates the new mutation of the virus.”

But he stressed that it is "very likely" that the current vaccine will be effective against the new strain of the emerging corona virus, which has been detected in Britain, which is more capable of spreading, and raises the fear of a sharp rise in the number of "Covid-19" infections.

The scientist, who is one of the founders of the Biontech laboratory, with his wife Ozlem Torresi, added that "it is certain that the immune response raised by the vaccine will also be able to deal with the new strain of the virus."

He justified his optimism by the fact that the vaccine he developed with his partner, Pfizer, would be effective, because "it contains more than 1000 amino acids, and only nine of them have been transformed, which means that 99% of the protein is still the same."

He indicated that Biontech is supposed to publish the results of its experiments on the new strain of SARS-Cove-2 within two weeks.

• The emergence of a new strain of "Corona" in the United Kingdom causes concern all over Europe.

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