Cuba is already making its own industrial-scale coronavirus vaccine

Cuba announced today that Abdala coronavirus vaccine, under development by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in the Caribbean Island, began to be manufactured on an industrial scale.

“Abdala. They are made industrial lots of this vaccine candidate in the laboratories of our biopharmaceutical industry “, reported the Presidency of Cuba in his Twitter social network account on the Immunizer who is about to enter the end of phase III clinical trials,

On May 4, the Cuban Deputy Prime Minister, Jorge Luis Perdomo, visited the facilities of the AICA laboratories, specializing in the manufacture of injectable drugs, among other productions, and where the drug is manufactured.

“Its scientists and its workers work tirelessly in development and production vaccine candidates to vaccinate our population against Covid-19, ”the Deputy Prime Minister said on Twitter.

So far Cuban scientists are working on six of their own projects

Perdomo, accompanied by the president of the BioCubaFarma group of companies, Eduardo Martnez, became acquainted with the production system of the candidate vaccine Abdala and reviewed the capacities during the installation of new lines to be put at the service of the production of this vaccine and of the Sovereign, which develops the Finlay Vaccine Institute, and that the Soberana 02 project is already in its final phase.

On May 1, the president of BioCubaFarma confirmed on social media that the production facilities of AICA Laboratories to stably manufacture industrial batches of Abdala vaccine, that the first “was put into service after rigorous quality control”, and there is a production capacity of 46 million doses.

Start vaccination

In the coming days, Cuban health authorities will begin the vaccination process by seven municipalities of Havana, the province most affected by Covid-19 on the island, to extend the intervention study with the Soberana 02 and Abdala vaccine projects, which will include around 1.7 million habaneros who will receive the drugs, reported the Sputnilk news agency.

Both vaccine projects are in phase III and final clinical trial, and so far they have been applied in 40,000 volunteers in Havana (Soberana 02), and 48,000 in the eastern provinces of Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Guantnamo (Abdala).

These numbers of people vaccinated are also joined by the participants in the intervention study with the two drugs, intended mainly for healthcare personnel, scientists, workers in the biotechnology industry, among others, which added more than 270,000 subjects in the two regions of the country.

So far, Cuban scientists are working on six vaccine projects, three of them developed at the Finlay Vaccine Institute Sovereign 01, Sovereign 02 and Sovereign Plus-, while the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology focuses on vaccine projects Abdala and Mambisa.

In addition, specialists from China and Cuba are working together to obtain a vaccine called Pan-Corona, which is effective against different strains of the coronavirus.