Israeli medical data has shown that the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is 97 percent effective against the British variant of the coronavirus, the founder of BioNTech said on Wednesday.
Dr. Ugur Sahin, the co-founder of BioNTech, who helped develop the vaccine, told Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster that the company is currently examining the vaccine’s efficiency against the Indian variant.
Sahin praised Israel’s vaccine deployment, calling the organization of the mass vaccination program “simply perfect” during his interview.
He noted that recent meetings held by the pharmaceutical company have involved an analysis of Israeli data, allowing it to calculate how many lives the vaccine saved in the past four months.
In separate comments, Sahin said “we are still testing the Indian variant, but the Indian variant has mutations that we have already tested for and which our vaccine works against, so I am confident,” according to AFP.
Also on Wednesday, Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kish said during a Knesset plenary session that Israel will likely remove its last remaining internal coronavirus restrictions, known as the “Green Pass,” next month if infection rates continue to drop and remain very low, according to Maariv.
