Venezuela’s National Academy of Medicine reiterated its warning on Wednesday that the drugs being developed in Cuba are “ not actual vaccines ” against covid-19, “ but experimental products, ” despite President Nicolás Maduro announcing that one of them will be in produced in the country.
“We have already warned that Cuban products are not actual vaccines, but experimental products whose composition, safety or efficacy are unknown,” read a statement from the Academy.
Last Sunday, Maduro announced that Venezuela will produce 2 million Abdullah a month, one of Cuban’s covid-19 vaccine projects, after reiterating that it has signed an agreement with the Caribbean island to produce the drugs.
“We have signed an agreement to produce in our laboratories (…) 2 million vaccines per month of the Abdalá vaccine, which has been around for about the month of August, September,” said the president.
He also assured the country will sign agreements with China, Russia and “other countries” to produce vaccines against Covid-19.
In this regard, the Academy stressed that “there is an urgent need for a national vaccination plan against Covid-19, which will serve as a fundamental support for all initiatives needed to ensure the immunization of an estimated 15 million people. Venezuelans.”
So far, Venezuela has obtained 250,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine and 500,000 Chinese Sinopharm, according to government information that has provided scant data, so it is not known how many of them were vaccinated or to whom.
The units received so far, all double doses, are only enough to vaccinate 1.3% of the population, almost 30 million inhabitants, although according to Health Minister Carlos Alvarado the immunization is rapid, something that does not match with the actual figures.
On the other hand, Maduro announced on Sunday that the executive has managed to release funds that the US had “ kidnapped ” because of international sanctions, enough to obtain 11,374,400 vaccines from the Covax mechanism, even though the government has passed the AstraZeneca formula, which was initially assigned the system to Venezuela.
For the Academy, this means “a step in the right direction,” but they believe that “it’s not enough,” so they say “the national demand” for vaccines should “continue” until every eligible Venezuelan is vaccinated. ” .
They also announced that the announcement had been made “without the knowledge of the National Technical Council for Access to Covax,” consisting of the Department of Health, opponents, representatives of the National Academy of Medicine and scientific societies, with the guidance of the Pan American Health Organization and Unicef.
In this regard, they also ask for the doubts raised by this announcement to be allayed, the first being the lack of information “about what vaccine will be obtained or when it will arrive in Venezuela”.