COVID vaccine creator Professor Ugur Sahin says life could be "normal" by next winter.

Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech, is one of the developers of the lifeline vaccine, which has been produced alongside pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Preliminary work shows it could stop more than 90% of recipients from contracting coronavirus.

It works in two doses given three weeks apart and the UK is set to get 10 million doses by the end of the year.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, has said this could mean life returns to normality by spring 2021.

But appearing on The Andrew Marr Show, Sahin said the impact of the vaccine will only "start to make an impact" by April, when it is hoped that more than 300m jags will have been given worldwide.

Sahin said: "Summer will help us because the infection rate will go down in the summer and what is absolutely essential is that we get a high vaccination rate until or before autumn/winter next year."

That's if all necessary regulators approve its usage.

In the UK, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said the NHS will be ready to deploy the vaccine from December, subject to approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Sahin said: "This winter will be hard. We will not have a big impact on the infection numbers with our vaccine in this winter.

"If everything continues to go well, we will start to deliver the vaccine [at the] end of this year, beginning [of] next year."

He went on: "What is absolutely essential is that we get a high vaccination rate until or before autumn/winter next year."

He continued: "I'm confident that this will happen because there are a number of vaccine companies helping us to increase the supply, and so that we could have a normal winter next year."