Cuba develops five candidate vaccines against covid-19

Cuba includes thousands in vaccine tests against covid 3:43

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -

The sign on the door was handwritten and the lights were turned off to save electricity, but inside the clinic Cuban doctors were applying what they say is a cutting-edge vaccine against the coronavirus.

Despite the worsening economy and increased U.S. sanctions, the communist-led island has accomplished a feat that no other Latin American country can claim to date: developing five covid-19 vaccine candidates, two from which are in phase three trials, the last one.

As the number of coronavirus cases continue to rise on the island, its vaccine candidates and the island's aspirations to be a biomedical powerhouse will be put to the test.

On Wednesday, Cuba reached a new grim record for covid-19 infections: 1,051 new cases diagnosed in 24 hours.

In March, Cuban officials announced that they were expanding vaccine trials already underway to include hundreds of thousands more.

The first in the expanded tests are 150,000 front-line workers, including Ida Martínez Hernández, a dentist who at the beginning of the pandemic was dispatched by the government to help combat the spread of the virus.

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“We have been working all this time.

In tests, at the airport, in isolation centers.

We are high-risk people, this will give us more protection, "Martinez told CNN upon receiving his first dose of the Cuban Soberana-02 vaccine.

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In times of crisis, the Cuban government has often organized its people to carry out seemingly quixotic endeavors, from trying to cut a record sugarcane crop to mass demonstrations demanding the return of Elían González.

Now, as Cuba suffers from shortages of food and basic medicines, the island's government has set its sights on developing the kind of sophisticated COVID-19 vaccines that other, much richer countries have not achieved.

Frontline health workers in Havana received their first dose of the Soberana-02 vaccine against covid-19 on Wednesday.

While final test results for the two most advanced vaccines are not expected for a few months, many on the island are already celebrating early.

A cleverly produced and tweeted video by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel proclaims that Cubans were producing "more than a vaccine, a country."

Cuban superstar musical duo Buena Fe wrote a song about vaccines, crooning that the drugs were like "brave David taking on the bully Goliath."

Chest beatings and politics aside, some researchers say Cuba's approach of making its own vaccines that could reach the arms of all Cubans and millions of people throughout the region is badly needed right now. .

"Latin America unfortunately lacks some of this self-sufficiency ecosystem and Cuba is ideal because they have their own production capacity and are also highly recognized and have a good reputation," said Dr. María Elena Bottazzi, associate dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Long isolated from much of the rest of the world, Cuba has for decades manufactured many of the medicines the island needs and increasingly exports Cuban-made vaccines abroad.

When the pandemic hit, Cuba was one of the few developing countries that was well positioned to produce its own vaccines.

Other countries, particularly those that cannot afford the vaccine - or for political reasons do not want to accept vaccines from Western countries - hope that the cheap and easy-to-store vaccines promised by Cuba can make up the difference.

Iran, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei banned the use of American and British vaccines, is currently conducting large-scale trials with 100,000 doses of Sovereign-02 and could begin producing the Cuban vaccines in the Islamic Republic.

In March, Cuba announced that it would send 30,000 doses of the candidate vaccines Soberana-02 and Abdala to its socialist ally Venezuela and that Cuban and Chinese scientists would jointly develop a new vaccine against emerging variants of the coronavirus.

Cuba has bet its entire response to the pandemic on making its own vaccines, and now the island is doubling down on that bet by vastly expanding testing of those drugs.

Health workers wait for a dose of the Soberana-02 vaccine in Havana, on March 24.

In March, Cuban officials said larger trials would include Havana's entire adult population, nearly two million people, and the epicenter of the virus on the island.

By August, half of the island's population, some six million, would receive the vaccines, authorities said.

But moving so quickly toward mass vaccination is a risky strategy that could backfire if vaccine candidates turn out to be less effective than Cuban scientists predicted.

While previous tests demonstrated the safety of the vaccines, Cuban researchers have yet to determine exactly how well the vaccines will work.

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"Cuban vaccines have not even completed the vaccination plan for volunteers in phase three and we do not know its effectiveness," Amílcar Pérez Riverol, former professor of Microbiology and Virology at the University of Havana, wrote in a Facebook post. close Cuba's efforts in the field of vaccines.

But at a Havana clinic, where doctors and nurses apply about 100 doses of Soberana-02 to frontline workers each day, they said they had seen no serious side effects during expanded trials and were confident that the increase of vaccination would help turn the tide of the pandemic on the island.

"We are all convinced," said nurse Norma Olivares, "the vaccine works and gives immunity."

Coronavirus Vaccine