The Cuban regulatory authority authorized last July the emergency use of Abdala, the first in Latin America.
Cuba reported on Monday that it will begin the process to obtain endorsement from the World Health Organization (WHO) for its Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus anticovid vaccines at the end of January, after having begun the procedure with its Abdala immunizer.
“The Abdala vaccine has already submitted its file. We have to present two files for Soberana 02 and one for Soberna Plus,” Vicente Vérez, director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute, the laboratory that developed the sovereigns, said at a press conference.
The scientist pointed out that the laboratories that develop Cuban vaccines have very valuable first-rate data and “have nothing to envy to the clinical trials of any multinational.”
However, “in terms of production facilities and compliance with high standards, good manufacturing practices, there are things that we have to complete, that we have to adjust,” he admitted, noting that the process for presenting the dossier to the OMS is “long, cumbersome, complex and expensive”.
Last July, the Cuban regulatory authority authorized the emergency use of Abdala, the first in Latin America, with an effectiveness of 92.28% against the risk of contracting covid with symptoms. While in August he endorsed Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus.
Vérez pointed out that the WHO also considers the consistency of the number of doses produced, an aspect that the island is also working on. He specified that during 2021 the country produced 37 million doses.
Cuba, which presented its most critical moment of contagion between July and October last year, has so far vaccinated 9.8 million of the 11.2 million inhabitants with its complete three-dose schedule and more than four million have the reinforcement.
Since the first cases were presented in March 2020, 102,521 people have been infected with covid-19 and 8,367 have died.
Under a US embargo since 1962, Cuba began to develop its own vaccines in the 1980s, discovering the first against meningitis B, and today almost 80% of the vaccines included in its immunization program are manufactured in the Island. (I)
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