while speaking at an event organized by Reuters on Friday, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said the new variant might be able to infect vaccinated people and people with high exposure to COVID-19.

Additional takeaways

"It's not clear if vaccinated people have sufficient protection to avoid severe disease from new variant, we anticipate vaccinated people will be protected from severe disease."

"This new variant came earlier than I expected, I expected it sometime next year."

"We have the ability to adapt COVID-19 vaccine relatively quickly."

"We are confident that vaccinated people and those with booster shots will have sufficient protection against severe disease and may be any type of disease; we will know in a few weeks."

"The higher rate of immune people, the better we are protected against COVID-19 having the ability to mutate."

"I think we will need a new vaccine against COVID-19, it's a question of when we will need it."

Market reaction

These comments seem to be weighing on market sentiment. As of writing, US stock index futures were down between 0.3% and 0.4%.