Pfizer late Jan. 28 responded to comments from a director at the company about exploring ways to mutate COVID-19 as a method to “preemptively develop new vaccines.”
“In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research,” Pfizer said in a lengthy written statement after days of ignoring queries from The Epoch Times and other outlets.
Pfizer did say that it has conducted research “where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern.”
“This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update is required,” the company added….