One of the scientists who developed the Cuban vaccine against COVID-19 died of coronavirus

The scientist Gustavo Sierra, developer of one of Cuba’s aspiring COVID-19 vaccines, coronavirus death. The news was confirmed on Twitter by BioCuba Farma, the group of companies in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries of Cuba.

“It is with deep sadness that we communicate the news of the death of the eminent scientist Dr. Gustavo Sierra, founder of Cuban Biotechnology, one of the authors of the vaccine VAMENGOC-BC and a precursor to other important results, ”the entity said on the social network.

For his part, the President of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, Express: “COVID-19 continues to claim lives, health and resources. The contagion curve does not flatten out. I ask everyone for maximum care, physical distance and permanent cleanliness. Only together can we overcome this bad streak. If everyone can, yes he can ”.

In the same Twitter thread, he added: “A prestigious scientist, Dr Gustavo Sierra, has died from COVID. In tribute to its work, Cuba confirms that science and efforts will not fail to defeat the pandemic“.

Sierra was working on the development of the VAMENGOC-BC, one of the antidotes that Cuba wants to manufacture in its fight against the coronavirus. Founder of the Cuban Society of Immunology, this scientist was considered one of the brightest minds in the country.

The newspaper The Miami Herald recorded that Francisco Duran Garcia, Director of Epidemiology at the Cuban Ministry of Health, said Sierra was “a 69-year-old patient from the municipality of Playa with a history of high blood pressure“. And he added that the official’s voice was broken when speaking of his colleague and that the regret had spread to the entire Cuban biotech conglomerate.

Cuba closed April as its worst month in pandemic in cases and deaths

Cuba notified this Saturday 915 new cases of COVID-19 and April ended as the month with the worst indicators in the entire pandemic, with more than a quarter of the total positive results to date and a record number of deaths.

SARS-CoV-2 infections rise to 107,622, of which 31,346 were recorded in April, 5,600 more than the previous month, according to the daily report of the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap).

Total death toll rose to 654 after 10 more deaths were reported today. It was not until April that they died 122 people carriers of the disease, which is also an increase from the previous record of February 108.

Cuba’s 915 daily new cases were diagnosed by processing 23,384 PCR tests on Friday.

Saturday’s game also includes 872 more hospital discharges, bringing the number of patients recovered to 101,475. Another 5,437 remain hospitalized, the vast majority stable, though there are 40 in serious condition. and 37 in critical condition.

Most of Saturday’s cases (632) occurred in Havana, out of 2.2 million inhabitants, where a curfew has been in force since February and where educational centers, restaurants, bars and beaches remain closed, among other measures to fight infections.

The shortage resulting from the crisis, however, is forcing people to go out and queue to buy basic commodities.

Cuba develops five coronavirus vaccine candidates, two of which -Soberana 02 and Abdala- are in the third and final phase of clinical trials to assess their effectiveness.

These drugs do not yet have an authorization for use or emergency registration, an issue that authorities hope to resolve in June based on preliminary results from the final stage of testing Soberana 02 and Abdala.

Cuban diet has not acquired vaccines on the international market and is not part of the Covax mechanism created under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote equitable access to immunization in low- and middle-income countries.

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