Cuba will begin next week the third phase of the clinical trial of two of its own vaccines against the new coronavirus and could become the first country in Latin America to obtain a nationally tested and manufactured immunizer, executives and scientists announced on Thursday.
Given the good results of the first two phases and in parallel, the most advanced vaccine among them is already produced on an industrial scale, Sovereign 02, of which Cuba would have the capacity to manufacture 110 million doses in 2021, at which it would be added.indeterminate number of call Abdallah.
“The Cuban bet is to have very effective vaccines, the second bet is that they are very safe vaccines, the third is that they do not limit the number of doses that can be applied, you can re-immunize yourself at six months if necessary, this for new mutations.” , said the director of the Finlay Institute, Vicente Vérez, to a group of journalists during a tour of the production plants.
Cuba is also studying two other vaccines, Mambisa and Soberana 01. None of them work from live viruses, but from parts of them, which, in addition to being safer, allows more inoculations and a cold chain not so much. strictly.
Sovereigns 01 and 02 are based on the processing of mammalian superior cells and were developed by Finlay and the Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM). Abdalá and Mambisa – for intranasal application – do this from yeasts processed by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), experts said.
“There are two products – Abdalá and Mambisa on the one hand and Soberanas on the other – with different technologies for the same purpose,” CIGB production director Jorge Luis Vega told The Associated Press.
Cuba has an important state science pole formed in the 1980s, which investigates and produces many of the medicines it needs for its domestic market, including 80% of the vaccines in its national health program, which is free.
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Experts said that given the urgency of spreading the new coronavirus, the island’s plan was based on analyzing a set of candidates at a time.
“In the face of a pandemic, you need to move forward with more strategies,” said Marta Ayala, CIGB director, noting that research in general for a vaccine can take 10 years and this time the process had to be completed in eight months. .
The scientists indicated that the results of the first two phases – which focus on product safety – were published in two articles on special pages for their colleagues to review, as established by the international community of specialists against COVID-19.
The third phase of the Sovereign and Abdalá will begin between March 3 and 8, said Eduardo Ojito, director of the CIM, which means that the people of the island will start receiving doses.
At this stage, consideration will also be given to whether a third dose is required to reactivate the vaccine or whether Sovereign 02 can be combined with others to achieve longer-term immunity.
Eduardo Martínez, director of BioCubafarma, the state-owned company that sells Cuban medicines, acknowledged that the world is hungry for vaccines and the island is negotiating with some countries, but declined to provide further details.
Cuba has experienced an outbreak of COVID-19 since the resumption of commercial flights in November, so the government has implemented new containment measures. To date, there have been more than 47,000 new coronavirus cases and nearly 400 deaths on the island.