NEW YORK — The way Greece dealt with the coronavirus pandemic "is something that makes me extremely proud", Greek-born Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in an interview published Saturday in Ta Nea.

In his interview, Bourla said that Greece stands out for its success in dealing with the pandemic crisis, and said that "the company's hub in Thessaloniki will serve as an incubator of high-level techniques and extremely specialized digital abilities such as artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and agile software development."

Bourla said that Pfizer is working very fact, "partly thanks to technology mRNA" for a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, "the enemy", as he called it. "We are working with unprecedented speed. Historically, the development of vaccines for a new pathogen lasts many years. Because of the situation's urgency, we are challenging ourselves to push our research under an accelerated timeline," he told the daily. The focus is on shifting from a progressive chain of steps to parallel ones, he added, without skipping necessary steps, and ensuring safety.