BioNTech founder suggests vaccine could lead to 'normal winter' in 2021

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(Image credit: DANIEL ROLAND/AFP via Getty Images)

Ugur Sahin, the co-founder of BioNTech, warned the current winter "will be hard," but the next one could be much smoother "if everything continues to go well" with his company's coronavirus vaccine candidate.

Sahin told the BBC on Sunday that the vaccine, which is being co-developed with Pfizer and was found to be 90 percent effective in an interim trial analysis, likely won't immediately bring down infection numbers if it's unveiled later this year, but he believes "we could have a normal winter" in 2021. The plan, he said, is to deliver 300 million doses worldwide by April, which should begin to curb the spread of the virus, and after that it will be "absolutely essential" to "get a high vaccination rate before autumn/winter next year."

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.