The founder of Germany’s BioNTech said on Sunday that Europe cannot be shut down this fall because the coronavirus pandemic is under control.
Ugur Sahin, whose company developed one of the first vaccines to combat COVID-19, told the US World on Sunday newspaper he thought the latest shutdowns would be the last.
“In many European countries and the US, we probably won’t need lockdowns by the end of the summer,” he said.
There will be outbreaks, but there will be background noise. There will be mutations, but they won’t scare us. ‘
EU vaccination trails follow other major countries
Sahin, who founded his company with his wife Özlem Türeci, made his comments at a time when EU leaders are under fire for the bloc’s relatively slow vaccination coverage, compared to countries like the US, UK and Israel.
But he added that the problems would turn out to be temporary, as he insisted that 70% of Germans should be vaccinated by the end of September.
The husband and wife team has been honored for their work on the coronavirus
The husband-and-wife team has been awarded the German Knight Commander’s Cross for their contribution to fighting the virus.
Almost 9% of the German population had received at least one vaccination syringe since Saturday.
Meanwhile, Britain was halfway through and 50% of adults had received at least one dose.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to find ways to speed up the country’s urge to vaccinate and refuses to rule out the purchase of Russia’s Sputnik V-jab outside of the EU’s joint procurement program.
Merkel switched to a lockdown strategy
Merkel will hold talks with regional leaders on Monday to decide whether plans for a gradual reopening of the economy should be scrapped as infection rates continue to soar.
German authorities say the incidence is higher than 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants for a week.
That’s the threshold above which they say they should impose stricter distance rules to avoid overburdening healthcare.
Bavaria’s conservative Prime Minister Markus Soeder, a likely candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor after the national elections, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that the closure measures should remain in force for the time being.
“One wrong move now risks turning this third wave (of the virus) into a permanent wave,” he said.
“We have a tool: the emergency brake. It must be strictly applied.”
jf / sri (dpa, EPD, Reuters)