Cuba’s Covid-19 vaccines receive national health registration

Cuba's homegrown vaccines against Covid-19, Soberana 02, Soberana Plus and Abdala, received the sanitary registration granted by the Center for State Control of Medicines, Medical Equipment and Devices (CECMED) for its proven efficacy.

In a tribute to the developers and producers of the vaccines on Saturday, CECNED Director Olga Lidia Jacobo Casanueva explained that the vaccines meet the established requirements in terms of quality, safety and proven efficacy in the immunization of the Cuban population against Covid-19.

Three years after Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel asked scientists and researchers to create our own vaccines to combat the disease, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, this achievement has allowed Cuba to report zero deaths from Covid-19 since August 2022 and control contagions.

Three months after the request made by the Cuban president, Soberana, the first vaccine candidate, was presented, and shortly after came Abdala, which facilitated the authorization for the emergency use of vaccines, given the number of confirmed positive cases in the country.

In Abdala’s case, it was the first vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus developed and produced in Latin America and the Caribbean, and it was authorized on July 9, 2021, to be used in adults, after the results of its phase III clinical trials, which demonstrated an efficacy of 92.28 percent in the prevention of symptomatic disease, were known.

The experts and scientists ratified the safety that characterizes Cuba’s vaccines against Covid-19, firstly due to the very nature of the technological platforms used, and secondly because they have high thermo-stability. Unlike others that require special conditions for storage, at freezing temperatures, Cuba’s vaccines can be stored between two and eight degrees Celsius.

During the clinical studies, an efficacy higher than 90 percent was demonstrated, but the most important evidence was the impact on reducing contagions in Cuba as of October 2021, when 60 percent of the population had been immunized Abdala and Soberana.

Cuba is today among the world’s top 10 countries with most citizens immunized against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which, including its pediatric population, raising the level of protection to more than 90 percent of Cuban inhabitants.