Scientist Behind Pfizer Vaccine Suggests Normalcy Returns in Winter 2021

Professor Ugur Sahin, the chief executive of BioNTech, one of the companies behind a promising coronavirus vaccine, said he hopes the vaccine will be widely available by next summer, the vast majority of people are immunized by autumn, and life will return to normal by winter.

In a BBC interview, the German immunologist said that “[if] everything continues to go well, we will start to deliver the vaccine end of this year, beginning next year…. Our goal is to deliver more than 300 million of vaccine doses until April next year, which could allow us to already start to make an impact.”

Sahin and his wife, immunologist Özlem Türeci, are the founders of BioNTech, a medical technology and immunotherapy developer, which partnered with the global pharmaceutical company Pfizer to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Clinical trials of 43,000 people have seen a 90% success rate of immunization, and have been praised by Dr. Anthony Faucci, America’s preeminent infectious-disease expert, as “extraordinary.”

Sahin said to the BBC, “I’m very confident that transmission between people will be reduced by such a highly effective vaccine – maybe not 90% but maybe 50% – but we should not forget that even that could result in a dramatic reduction of the pandemic spread.”