Covid-19 pandemic: Normal life back next winter, says vaccine creator

The impact of a new Covid-19 vaccine will kick in over summer and life should be back to normal by next winter, one of its creators has said.

Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, which announced promising preliminary results of its coronavirus vaccine with Pfizer, said on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that the companies were aiming to distribute 300 million doses by April, which will see a "bigger impact" by summer.

Professor Sahin said, "I'm very confident that transmission between people will be reduced by such a highly effective vaccine - maybe not 90% but maybe 50% - but we should not forget that even that could result in a dramatic reduction of the pandemic spread."

He also told BBC that if everything goes well the vaccine would begin to be delivered at the "end of this year, beginning of next year".

Read more: Behind Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine, an understated Turkish-German husband and wife team