By Rubén G. Abelenda on August 31, 2020
Get up my Cuba, I have arrived.
The Cuban vaccine candidate Soberana 01 against Covid-19 is today a dream for the people of Cuba that will become a reality when it is ready to be applied, once the clinical trials are completed in January of next year.
In recent statements to the press, Vicente Vérez, director of the prestigious Cuban Finlay Institute (IFV), in charge of the project developing the vaccine, stated that it will not be the first one in the world, but it will cover the whole population of his country.
He expressed that Soberana 01, until now the only vaccine against Covid-19 made in Latin America and the Caribbean, is a dream for his compatriots. The preventive drug of the new coronavirus, developed by the IFV, entered its phase I of clinical trials in humans, after showing positive results in the preclinical stage.
The first group made up of integrated 20 individuals, in ages between 19 to 59 years old, was already vaccinated a week ago to evaluate the drug’s safety and, according to the researchers, all of them are in good health. The only adverse effect was a mild pain at the injection site, a common side event for all vaccines, according to the same specialists.
Once phase I is completed, it will enter the next stage on September 11, with a sample size of 676 volunteers, including the 40 from the initial stage.
The research, which in all its stages should be concluded in January 2021, and available to the population in February, joins the group of 30 potential vaccines that at the international level have already received the authorization from the World Health Organization (WHO) to advance into clinical trials in humans.
In the midst of the tightened blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba, the IFV is conducting four vaccine projects as candidates to find a specific vaccine against the disease that currently plagues the entire planet.
The experienced and recognized Cuban scientists are working intensely and with the professionalism that characterizes them in the search of ending definitively the pandemic that is killing so many, as well as the economic, commercial and financial siege that Washington continues to intensify on our country, in spite of the complex international situation generated by the Covid-19.
Of course, for Cuba and many countries and peoples of the world that will also benefit Sovereign 01 is a dream, but for the US rulers, it is a nightmare because it already constitutes another setback to their aggressive policy blockade meant to deny such success.
Rubén G. Abelenda is Ambassador of Cuba in Gambia
Source: Network in Defense of Humanity – Cuba, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau