Cuba is close to a Covid-19 vaccine miracle

Earlier this week, Cuba’s BioCubaFarma laboratory announced that the Abdala vaccine was 92.28% effective in preventing Covid-19 when applying a three-injection regimen.

Elderly people in the capital Havana received the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Cuba in May. Photo: AFP.

Two days earlier, Cuba also announced that Soberana 2 was 62% effective after the first two injections.

Idania Caballero, a pharmacologist at BioCubaFarma, noted that all Covid-19 vaccines in Cuba were developed based on decades of medical achievements and have proven effective against infectious diseases.

`There are six diseases that have been completely eliminated in Cuba thanks to the vaccine program. Vaccines produced using these technologies have been applied to newborns in the first few months of life,` she noted.

According to John Kirk, an expert on Latin America and medical internationalism in Cuba, embargoes from the US make the road to developing a Covid-19 vaccine in the neighboring island nation more difficult.

The Cuban Center for Genetic Design and Biotechnology (CIGB) started testing the Abdala vaccine in November 2020 with 132 volunteers from 19 to 54 years old.

Responding to Cuba Debate, CIGB General Director Marta Ayala Avila emphasized that the vaccine performance was evaluated by an independent unit, the Cuban Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics.

Explaining on the British Medical Journal, Dr. Marlene Ramirez Gonzalez said Cuba uses sub-unit vaccine technology for Abdala and Soberana 2, along with a number of other vaccines that are in the early stages of development.

Abdala is one of five Covid-19 vaccines being developed in Cuba.

CIGB named the Abdala vaccine after a poem by Cuban revolutionary and national hero Jose Marti.

Experts say Cuba has the capacity to operate two independent vaccine lines with more than 90 million units shipped each year, but still maintains the production of other pharmaceuticals for the domestic and export markets.

Dr. Vicente Vérez Bencomo, one of Cuba’s leading vaccine scientists, is confident about the safety of the country’s self-developed vaccine.

Responding to US media in April, Dr. Vicente Verez Bencomo, director of Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute, shared that the country is `making a safe bet` when developing its own vaccine using traditional technology.

According to the director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute, the Cuban vaccine was launched later than some other vaccines in the world because the country wanted to wait to understand more about the virus and the cell infection mechanism of nCoV.

BioCubaFarma President Eduardo Martinez Diaz made a similar assertion in April. He is confident that the vaccine developed by this country is very safe.

A Cuban medical team arrived in South Africa to support the fight against the epidemic in April 2020.

Before the results of phase three clinical trials were available, the Cuban government was still confident enough in vaccine technology to open a mass vaccination campaign from May 12 using Abdala in Havana and many localities across the country.

According to the plan, all people in the capital Havana will be vaccinated with at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot before the end of June. About 50% of the city’s population is expected to be vaccinated with two shots in the three-shot vaccine course.

Speaking before the Global Health Assembly (WHA), Cuban Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda plans to expand vaccination to 70% of the country’s population before the end of August. The vaccine intervention strategy has proven beneficial

`Once all trials and licensing are completed, we will vaccinate the entire population and have enough capacity to help other countries,` he declared.