Cuba completes Covid-19 immunization with home-grown vaccines in 20 municipalities

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Cuba culminated this Monday the vaccination against Covid-19 in 20 of its 168 municipalities. More than 2.6 million people have received the complete scheme of Abdala or Soberana 02 + Soberana Plus, the most advanced formulas of the five developed by scientific institutions on the island.

In the 15 municipalities of Havana – home to 2.2 million Cubans – more than 1.3 million people over 19 years of age have been vaccinated with the three recommended doses of one of the injectables designed in Cuba, according to the head of the primary health care department of the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap), María Elena Soto.

Fifty-seven vaccination centers remain open to complete the pending doses. The inoculation of anti-viral drugs will continue to be given to at-risk groups, in nursing homes, among psychiatric patients, and more than 3,000 hemodialysis patients, she said in a televised appearance.

Since July 23, Havana has had the highest number of daily infections on the island, with more than 1,000 each day, its highest level since the pandemic on the island in March 2020.

The vaccination process was also completed in four municipalities of Santiago de Cuba – the second most important province in the country – and the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud, the only one that has managed to reduce to zero the transmission of the coronavirus.

The Minsap official said that another 35 Cuban municipalities are currently in the different stages of vaccination, while in 19 more the procedure began on July 29.

This process includes vulnerable and high-risk groups, 9,000 pregnant women over 15 years of age, in the second and third trimester of pregnancy, and breastfeeding women.

The Abdala preparation received emergency use authorization from the Cuban regulatory authority and became the first Latin American anticovid vaccine to show 92.28% efficacy in Phase III clinical trials.

Likewise, the vaccine candidate Soberana 02 is awaiting approval after showing efficacy of 91.2 % with a scheme of two doses plus an extra dose of Soberana Plus, another of the compounds being investigated by Cuban scientists.

To date, 23.4 % of Cuba’s 11.2 million inhabitants have received the full three-dose regimen. In contrast, more than four million have been administered at least one dose of these formulas following clinical trials and intervention studies carried out simultaneously as the health care system.

Cuba has not purchased vaccines on the international market, nor is it part of the World Health Organization’s Covax mechanism created for middle- and low-income countries to have access to them.