Cuba intends to start its coronavirus vaccination campaign in June with one of its in-house vaccines and to have immunized half of its inhabitants by August, authorities announced on Tuesday (March 23).
"The moment of launching the vaccination that we are considering"
is
"the month of June,"
Iliana Morales Suarez, director of the Science and Innovation department of the Ministry of Health, told television.
Read also: In Cuba, the coronavirus crisis managed with an iron fist
The country has two vaccine candidates, Soberana 2 and Abdala, in phase 3, the last one before approval.
If either achieves final clearance, it would be the first Covid vaccine designed and produced in Latin America.
Before that, the country plans to have
"just over two million"
people vaccinated by May, by combining phase 3 clinical trials and larger-scale intervention studies with healthcare workers.
On March 4, Soberana 2 entered phase 3, which involves 44,000 volunteers, and on Monday 150,000 healthcare workers began to be vaccinated as part of an intervention study.
Both tests are conducted in Havana.
Another intervention study will also be launched in the capital, with 1.7 million volunteers.
Havana, which has 2.1 million inhabitants, is the most affected by the pandemic.
On Monday, Abdala began his phase 3 in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Granma and Guantanamo, in the east of the country, with 48,000 volunteers.
An intervention study will then be carried out in the same region, with 120,000 health workers.
Read also: Faced with Covid-19, Cuba is inspired by its methods of fighting AIDS
After the start of the vaccination campaign, authorities plan to have vaccinated by August more than half of the 11.2 million Cubans.
"At the beginning of August we should have finished vaccinating six million people"
, assured Iliana Morales Suarez.
Under an American embargo since 1962, Cuba began to develop its own vaccines in the 1980s and today nearly 80% of the vaccines in its immunization program are produced locally.
The country is working on four candidate vaccines: Mambisa (in phase 1), Soberana 1 (in phase 2), Soberana 2, Abdala (in phase 3) as well as a fifth, Soberana +, reformulation of Soberana 1 for convalescent people of disease.
These projects use a recombinant protein, a technique also used by the American biotechnology company Novavax.
The country remains relatively unaffected by the disease, with 68,250 cases including 401 deaths.
