Cuba’s COVID-19 vaccines serve the people, not profit

Cuba’s socialist approach to developing COVID-19 vaccines is strikingly different from that of capitalist nations around the world. Cuban production of four vaccines is science-based and dedicated to saving the lives of all Cubans and to international solidarity.

The New York Times’ ongoing report on global immunization programs shows that 67 vaccines have moved on to human trials; 20 of them are in the final phase of testing or have completed them. The United States, China, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, and India have each produced many vaccines; most vaccine-producing countries offer one or two vaccines.

Cuba is the only manufacturer of vaccines in Latin America; there is none in Africa. The only public entities producing the main vaccines are those of Cuba and Russia.

Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute has produced two COVID-19 vaccines. Trials of one of them, called Sovereign I, focus on protecting people previously infected with COVID-19. The antibody levels of some of them were found to be low and the vaccine could give a boost.

The other vaccine, Sovereign II, is about to enter final human trials. To verify protection, these trials require tens of thousands of subjects, half receiving the vaccine and the other half a placebo vaccine. Cuba’s population is relatively small, 11 million people, too small to produce enough infected people in the short time needed to test the protective effect of the vaccine. This is why Sovereign II will be tested in Iran.

100 million doses of Sovereign II are being prepared, enough to immunize 11 million Cubans, starting in March or April. The remaining 70 million doses will go to Vietnam, Iran, Pakistan, India, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. Sovereign II “will be ALBA’s vaccine,” explained Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez, referring to the solidarity alliance established in 2004 by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban Fidel Castro.

“Cuba’s strategy in marketing the vaccine represents a combination of what is good for humanity and its impact on global health. We are not a multinational where a financial objective comes first, ”says Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute in Cuba. The income generated by the sale of vaccines abroad will pay for health care, education and pensions in Cuba, just as happens with exports of medical services and drugs.

The Cuban Center for Genetic and Biotechnological Engineering is developing two more COVID-19 vaccines; One, called “Mambisa” (meaning a fighter in the wars of liberation in Spain), is administered by the nasal route, as is the vaccine against hepatitis B from Cuba. The other vaccine, named “Abdala” (character from a poem by Jose Marti) is administered intramuscularly. Both vaccines are involved in the first trials.

Cuba was ready

Cuban education emphasizes science and technology. In the 1990s, Cuba accounted for 11% of Latin American scientists with doctorates. Cuban scientists work in the fifty or so biomedical research and production facilities that together make up the Cuban state-owned BioCubaFarma Corporation, which produces vaccines, drugs, medical tests and medical equipment. It manufactures 60% of the drugs used in Cuba and 8 of the 12 vaccines.

Cuba has already produced a pioneering vaccine that prevents life-threatening infections caused by meningococcus type B. Cuba has developed a genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine and a vaccine that provides palliative treatment for lung cancer. A vaccine developed in Cuba offers protection against infections, in particular childhood meningitis, caused by the bacterium Hemophilus Influenza type B.

To create vaccines, Cuban scientists have relied on familiar technology.

To provide immunological supplementation, the antigen of the Cuban Sovereign II vaccine is mixed with the tetanus toxoid, as was done with the vaccine against the influenza Hemophilus from Cuba. As with other vaccines, scientists used a segment of the virus’s protein – here the COVID-19 virus – to form an antigen to stimulate protective antibodies. In contrast, the US vaccines Pfizer and Moderna contain the entire viral protein, not a segment. This protein contains “genetic instructions” that enter human cells, causing them to “make advanced proteins, which are then released into the body” where they trigger antibodies.

Observers suggest this innovative American technology may be less safe than that used in Cuban vaccines. Not requiring extremely cold storage, as American vaccines do, Cuban vaccines are suitable for areas lacking adequate refrigeration capacity.

Cuba’s biomedical production sector has also created drugs to treat Covid-19 infection. Interferon, an antiviral agent developed in Cuba, produced in China and used around the world, prevents many patients infected with Covid from becoming seriously ill. The Cuban anti-inflammatory drug Jusvinza, used to treat autoimmune diseases and Cuba I monoclonal antibodytolizumab, which moderates exaggerated immune responses, are both effective in reducing Covid-19-related deaths.

The other side

The US approach to the production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines relies on private enterprise, although the US government has effectively provided billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies to produce vaccines free of charge for beneficiaries. The companies have contracts with buyers abroad.

According to forbes.com in November 2020, “ If Moderna’s [vaccine] can get FDA approval and can make enough doses, its sales could be nearly $ 35 billion higher… than… in the last 12 months. Another report suggests that ‘companies (Pfizer and Moderna) are expected to earn billions of dollars in profits from their COVID vaccines this year. [and] there will be more profits in the years to come. Businesses “claim the rights to vast amounts of intellectual property.”

With the companies in charge, the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is skewed. As of January 27, “some 66.83 million doses have been sent, of which 93 percent have been delivered to just 15 countries.” In Latin America, only Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile have obtained adequate purchase contracts to vaccinate entire populations. Company contracts with African countries allow vaccination of only 30 percent of Africans in 2021. Significant vaccination has yet to start there.

The wealth gap determines the distribution. Epidemiologists at Duke University report that “While high-income countries make up only 16% of the world’s population, they currently hold 60% of the COVID-19 vaccines that have been purchased so far.” Cuban journalist Randy Alonso reports that “only 27 percent of the total population in low- and middle-income countries can be vaccinated this year.”

“The world is on the brink of catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid by lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries, ”said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director, Jan. 18 of the World Health Organization. He warned that “some countries and companies continue to prioritize bilateral deals, bypassing COVAX, driving up prices and trying to get to the front of the line.”

WHO has launched the global COVAX vaccine collaboration to ensure poor countries’ access to COVID-19 vaccines. The 190 countries registered have agreed to obtain vaccines through COVAX. Rich countries would provide COVAX with funds to enable 90 poor countries to receive free vaccines. COVAX plans to distribute two billion doses, enough to vaccinate only 25% of the populations of poor countries in 2021.

The problems include: rich countries order vaccines independent of COVAX; they buy more vaccines than they need; manufacturers set prices; and the prices are secret, variable and very high.

Most other COVID-19 vaccine-producing countries disagree with Cuba because of their profits and because they are complicit in the US economic blockade of Cuba. Carrying on with their day-to-day business affairs abroad, they adapt too easily to the US regulations by means of which this cruel policy is enforced. Specifically, the US blockade is hampering Cuba’s vaccination efforts, and they remain silent.

“We do not have all the raw materials and supplies in Cuba that we will need for the unprecedented scale of production required to vaccinate our entire population,” explained Dagmar García-Rivera, director of research at Cuban Institute of Vaccines Finlay. “They have to be bought and for that we need financing. This is made infinitely more difficult by the American embargo… The purchase of the reagents necessary for research and the raw materials for the production is a challenge which we face daily.

In the face of the pandemic, Cuba is demonstrating attention to detail suggesting a level of attention and concern that does not easily match elsewhere. For example, the Cubadebate.cu, government-friendly website of Cuba, provides a detailed daily update on the impact of the infection. Its Jan. 27 report features data for cities, provinces, nation and the world – and intensive care units nationwide. Readers learn that of 43 patients in intensive care that day, 16 were in critical, stable or unstable condition, and 27 were in “serious” condition.

All 43 cases are reviewed, starting with: “A Cuban citizen, 75, from Alquízar, Artemisa, already suffering from high blood pressure and ischemic heart disease who is afebrile, on mechanical ventilation, is hemodynamically stable … with acceptable blood gases (oxygen and CO2), radiologically improves with inflammatory lesions on the right [lung] base – reported as critical but stable. The cases of four Cubans who died that day are also presented.

Tackling a pandemic in Cuba, it is understood, is no accidental matter. The health of the Cuban people is not either.