Cuba starts vaccinating health workers with "home-made-vaccine"

Havana, Cuba: Cuba has started experimenting with their home-made vaccine on health workers. Coronavirus vaccine named Soberana 2 - meaning Sovereignty 2 is currently in its phase 3 trials.

The vaccine represents Cuba's best hope to lift the exclusion of the capital Havana and to return part of the lost economy, especially in the tourism sector.

Although Soberana has yet to be fully certified as an official vaccine, the authorities are so confident in its effectiveness that the process of giving it to 150,000 Cuban doctors, nurses and health workers is now in full swing.

Also read: Cuba’s Covid-19 vaccine goes into last stage trials Dagmar Garcia Rivera, the research director at the Finlay Vaccine Institute in Havana, stated that Soberna-2 is the first Cuban and Latin American coronavirus vaccine to advance to phase 3 trials.

The phase 3 medical trial will include 44,000 individuals and is the last test of the vaccine before it's forwarded to Cuba's national regulatory agency, the Center for State Control of Medicines, Equipment and Medical Devices (CECMED) for approval.

Cuba has a strong record in vaccine development, producing its own meningitis B vaccine in the late 1980s. The number of infections and deaths due to Covid-19 is much lower in Cuba than elsewhere in the world, but the lockdown has caused severe economic problems.

The government plans to vaccinate the people of Havana before the end of May.

Also read: Cuban researchers working to make COVID-19 vaccine

However, the communist government was criticized for not making doses of the other coronavirus vaccines, perhaps from Russia or China, available to start protecting medical personnel while the Soberana vaccine was under development.

Nevertheless, elsewhere in Latin America, there is interest in the Cuban developed vaccine candidates - which include at least two others outside Soberana - especially from Venezuela, Mexico and Jamaica.

The Cuban produced vaccine is highly anticipated in the region where people are relying on rich countries and WHO's COVAX facility for assistance.