In addition to Moderna, the biotech vaccine is one of the most widely administered anti-corona vaccines in Switzerland. Reports from the USA are now making headlines.
The German company now has to act, it wants to investigate reports from the USA about irregularities in a study on the corona vaccine produced together with the US partner Pfizer.
The specialist magazine “British Medical Journal” (“The BMJ”) had reported irregularities and errors in the study.
“Careful implementation and data collection in clinical studies has the highest priority for Biontech,” said a spokeswoman for the Mainz-based company of the dpa news agency on Thursday. “We take statements such as those made in the article seriously and check them as soon as we become aware of them.”
Whistleblower about incorrect vaccine storage
The background is information from a whistleblower (whistleblower) to “The BMJ”: According to this, the woman had worked in the USA in the fall of 2020 for a subcontractor that had carried out a small part of the study on the corona vaccine, which is now used worldwide, on behalf of Pfizer.
She accused her former employer of generating incorrect vaccination data because, among other things, laboratory samples were incorrectly labeled, the vaccine was incorrectly stored and reports of side effects were only followed up slowly. German experts said they did not see the effectiveness of the drug called into question by the allegations.
Oliver Cornely, Scientific Director of the Center for Clinical Studies in Cologne, said: “The errors described in the ‘The BMJ’ article do not limit the validity of the vaccine registration study.” The subcontractor’s investigation centers also looked after only 2.3 percent of the 44,000 participants in the study. (SDA)