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According to Biontech, vaccinations could lead to a “normal life” without a shutdown by the end of the summer.

That said Biontech boss Ugur Sahin on Tuesday in a press conference.

According to its own information, the company expects information on whether the vaccine will also prevent asymptomatic corona infections by the end of January or the beginning of February.

Then appropriate data should be available.

According to its own information, Biontech expects to make 12.5 million vaccine doses available to EU countries by the end of the year.

The company also states that it is considering all possibilities to expand its own production as much as possible.

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According to a BioNTech board member, the corona vaccine will be delivered to 25 distribution centers in Germany.

From there it will be distributed further.

"We have so many docking sites that it is difficult for the virus to escape"

Biontech boss Sahin is confident that his company's corona vaccine will also work against the new mutation of the virus that has emerged in Great Britain.

From a scientific point of view, the probability is high, he told the German press agency.

“We have already tested the vaccine against around 20 other virus variants with other mutations.

The immune response produced by our vaccine has always inactivated all forms of the virus. "

The virus has now mutated a little stronger, said Sahin.

“We now have to test it experimentally.

This will take about two weeks.

However, we are confident that this will not significantly affect the mechanism of action. "

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The antigen that the Mainz-based company and its US partner Pfizer use for the vaccine consists of over 1270 amino acids, according to Sahin.

Nine of them have now mutated, so not even one percent.

“Our vaccine sees the whole protein and causes multiple immune responses.

As a result, we have so many docking sites that it is difficult for the virus to escape.

However, that does not mean that the new variant is harmless. ”The Biontech vaccine based on the messenger molecule mRNA can in principle be quickly adapted to new variants.

According to Sahin, the comparatively long duration in the EU approval process had no influence on the amount of vaccine doses that the Mainz-based company produced.

“We had already planned a division of the vaccine doses in advance, and we adhere to that.

What has changed is of course the number we can deliver this year.

But overall, the number of cans that we promised the EU will not change. "

He called the EU approval for the Biontech vaccine, which took place on Monday, "historically by far the fastest drug approval".

Biontech not only had to answer the questions of the EU authorities, but also many questions from individual countries.

"This made the process more strenuous, but it was just part of taking care of the procedures in the EU correctly step by step."

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Neither he nor his wife, Biontech co-founder and medical director Özlem Türeci, have so far been vaccinated with the active ingredient of their company.

“But we want that as soon as we have a suitable basis for it,” he said.

"It is important for us that we provide our employees in production with the appropriate vaccine doses." The aim is to ensure the uninterrupted manufacture of vaccines in the Biontech production network over the next twelve months.

"We are therefore considering using a small batch that is independent of the EU quota for this purpose."

Sahin indicated that Biontech is considering further production facilities for the vaccine in addition to its plants in Mainz and Idar-Oberstein in Rhineland-Palatinate and soon also in Marburg in Hesse.

"We are talking about activating another production facility through a partnership," he said.

There is also the well-known partnership with the pharmaceutical company Dermapharm, which also produces for Biontech.

“We are now trying to find more partners.

We aim to make cans that were planned for the second half of 2021 available in the first half. "