Cuba : Second COVID-19 vaccine Soberana 2 boasts 91.2% efficacy

In the harsh time of the Pandemic, good news comes from the Caribbean. Cuba said on Thursday it's two-shot Soberana two vaccine, delivered with a booster called Soberana Plus, had shown 91.2% effective in late stage clinical trials against the COVID-19, following alike news about its Abdala vaccine.

Friday, 9th July 2021

Cuba: In the harsh time of the Pandemic, good news comes from the Caribbean. Cuba said on Thursday it's two-shot Soberana two vaccine, delivered with a booster called Soberana Plus, had shown 91.2% effective in late stage clinical trials against the COVID-19, following alike news about its Abdala vaccine. The report came from state-run biopharmaceutical corporation BioCubaFarma, which oversees the Finlay Institute, the maker of Soberana 2, also the Center for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology, the producer of Abdala. Last month, Abdala was found to have a 92.28 percent efficacy. While the Cuban efficacy claims have not been peer-reviewed, the results, if accurate, would catapult the U.S.-boycotted Caribbean island country into the select group of the United States, Germany and Russia that produce vaccines with the efficacy of higher than 90% - Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sputnik V. Cuba’s biotech sector has a rich history of vaccine development, producing 80% of vaccines used in the nation and exporting some of them. Communist-run Cuba is the 1st country in Latin America and the Caribbean to successfully develop a COVID-19 vaccine. The import-dependent island is in the throes of an economic disaster, with activity falling 10.9% last year and two percent in the 1st half of 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic kept the tourism sector shuttered, and Trump-era sanctions on top of the decades-old trade embargo hit finance and trade. Cuba said that it has a total of five candidate vaccines in the pipeline, with Abdala and Soberana 2 supposed to be quickly authorized for emergency use by local governors and sent up for approval to the WHO (World Health Organization). The local authorizations would open the way for other nations to purchase the COVID vaccines or produce them. Mexico, Argentina & Vietnam have expressed interest in production; also, Iran said that it is producing Soberana 2 after trials in that nation. Both coronavirus vaccines are “low” tech, meaning they use a traditional approach extending a part of the virus’s spike protein which supports the virus enter and infect cells, to build up the immune system. These COVID vaccines are generally less expensive to develop and easier to store and transport as they do not require extremely low temperatures. The three-shot Abdala, named after a poem by apostle Jose Marti, is given in 2-week intervals, while Soberana 2, translated as sovereign in English, is administered in 4-week intervals. Since the start of the pandemic, Cuba has been facing its worst coronavirus outbreak following the arrival of more infectious variants, setting new records for daily COVID-19 cases at over 3,500 this week. Authorities have already begun administering the up-to-now experimental vaccines en masse as part of "intervention studies" they believe will slow the expanse of the virus. Approximately 1.5 million of the country's 11.2 million inhabitants have been fully vaccinated to date. Cuba reported a total of 218,376 coronavirus cases and 1,431 deaths through Wednesday.