Host: Kara Swisher
Guests: Dr. Ozlem Tureci, Dr. Ugur Sahin, Co-Founders, BioNTech
Category: Biz & Tech | 🔬 Biotech
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[5:11] US: “I was convinced that this will (sic) become a pandemic very early. And this was the end of January.”
[9:45] OT: “That we could conduct an entire clinical development program in such a record time is because we started work streams, which you normally […] do subsequently, in parallel. […] And another aspect which helped was the very interactive conversation and cooperation with regulatory authorities around the world, who did not insist on taking the normal administrative times they need to assess your clinical trial in order to activate and approve it.”
[12:35] US: “[U]sually it is believed that if we get a vaccination rate of about 60% to 70% that should be able to limit the pandemic, not completely stop every outbreak but really limit the spread of the virus in communities.”
[13:47] US: “I think we live in a world where there is, of course, an amplification of every negative opinion. […] And there’s a lot of misinformation. And I am still optimistic. I believe there will be a lot of people who want to get vaccinated as soon as possible. And if the people just describe their experience, we know that the vaccination is just like any other vaccine.”
[17:43] OT: “Here in Germany, we definitely don’t have any interest in delaying or even interfering with U.S. elections. And, you know, clinical trials are highly regulated, and this is something which you cannot really delay or stop or expedite. So what we did, and when our data was reported and published, that was driven by the data itself, and its availability.”
[19:28] US: “[I]t is extremely important, crucial and good that there are different vaccines available. The key problem or a challenge is not only to make the vaccines available as fast as possible, but to make sufficient doses of vaccines available. And we have only a limited amount of vaccine doses available now for 2020. And until mid of 2021, we may have 500 million doses available. But, of course, the world population requires more than 7 billion doses of vaccines. So it is good that there are other companies.”
[21:36] US: “[I]t could happen that a one-dose vaccine is able to prevent disease. But a two-dose vaccine is most likely more suitable to prevent infection and prevent transmission.”
[24:16] OT: “[T]hat vaccines become available does not mean that we can quit all those measures which were established — social distancing, masks and so on. We have to maintain them. So it will not be a solution for the next couple of months, to put all the eggs into the vaccine basket and rely on a vaccine or herd immunity.”
[25:22] UT: “[U]ntil the end of summer [2021], I expect that the vaccination rate might be in the range of 60%, 70%. And if we reach that then we could have a normal autumn and winter next year.”
Rating: 🍎🍎🍎🍎
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 27 min | 🗓️ 12/03/2020
✅ Time saved: 25 min
