Covid-19: a new vaccine will be needed in 2022

Ten post jest także dostępny w języku: polski

New variants of Covid-19 mean that scientists are constantly looking for solutions to effectively protect as many people as possible from serious complications when infected with the virus. BioNTech’s CEO has announced that a new vaccine formulation needs to be developed to protect more effectively against new mutations of the disease, which are likely to appear as early as 2022.

BioNTech is a German company that has developed the first vaccine against Covid-19 in collaboration with the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The vaccine protects vaccinated individuals also against current variants of Covid-19 because they do not differ enough from the base mutation to bypass patients’ immune systems. However, as BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin points out, variants of the virus that become resistant to the currently administered vaccine could emerge as early as mid-2022. According to him, the evolution of the virus has just begun, and the results of the changes will probably be known as soon as next year.

Currently, campaigns are underway in many countries to encourage people to take advantage of the vaccination. In Poland, not only adults but also children over the age of 12 can benefit from it. In September 2021, BioNTech and Pfizer presented preliminary data to US regulators on the use of the vaccine in children aged 5 to 11 years. For children in this age group, a reduced dose of the product will be administered, which will be approximately one-third of the adult dose.