Spiked!

I hope BioNTech's Chief Executive, Ugar Sahin, is right, when he predicts that the Pfiser/BioNTech vaccine is "highly likely to work" on the UK's more infective variant of Covid-19 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/22/covid-vaccine-likely-to-work-on-uk-variant-biontech-boss-says). The novel vaccine was developed using mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid), designed to generate the protein found in the spikes of this corona virus. The spikes are used by these viruses to gain entry to the human cells, whose replicating mechanisms they take over. Although the new variant of Sars-CoV-2 has 9 mutations (quite a lot), Sahin notes that 99% of its spike proteins are common to those in the original. It will, however, be 2 weeks before they can be absolutely certain that the vaccine (a single dose of which, has already been given to 500,000 people in the UK) doesn't need to be modified. Even, if the vaccine currently offers effective protection from both variants, further mutations may well change its efficacy. Mutations will occur in humans and other infected animals (this is why the Danish mink were culled). The more infections there are (and the more diverse the infected organisms?), the more mutations are likely to arise. Certain mutations (or combinations of mutations) might well require tweaking of the mRNA used to generate vaccine. Further expensive and time-consuming safety testing would then also be required.