Havana, July 25. Cuba is developing an antigen against the omicron variant of the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus, which causes covid-19, which is ready for its next formulation as a vaccine candidate, official media reported this Monday.
The antigen, which has been produced at the laboratory level by the island’s biopharmaceutical industry, is ready to begin the process of preclinical and clinical trials in humans, according to the president of the state group BioCubaFarma, Eduardo Martínez, quoted by the Granma newspaper. .
Regarding the effectiveness of anticovid vaccines, the scientist pointed out that the new variants of the coronavirus increasingly escape induced immunity and even that obtained due to virus infection.
However, he considered that the three Cuban vaccines against covid-19 still have a high level of protection against serious illness and death, especially when they have high antibody titers.
The manager referred that among the variants derived from omicron is BA.5, which has caused a new outbreak of covid-19 in the world, and a trend of increasing positive cases in Cuba in recent weeks.
Cuba exceeded one hundred daily cases of covid-19 last Saturday for the first time in more than two months, confirming 114 new infections, and last Sunday it registered 103 new infections, figures that the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) did not report. since May 14, when it reported 103 infected.
The director of BioCubaFarma pointed out that the BA.2.75 variant -known as Centauro- shares 45 mutations with omicron BA.5, is currently reported in some 12 countries and may be five times more contagious than omicron BA.1, although there is still no lots of information about whether it increases the risk of severity.
“That’s why our country’s decision to reinforce with another dose,” he added.
He also indicated that the immunity of around 6,000 people in the country has been studied, and the preliminary results show that there is a “high level of immunity” against the coronavirus in the Cuban population.
Although the Cuban health authorities have considered the pandemic under control on the island as a result of a massive vaccination campaign with national formulations against covid, last week they announced the reestablishment of some preventive measures after detecting a recent increase in infections.
The three doses of the Cuban immunogens -Abadala, Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus- have been applied to almost 90.1% of the 11.1 million inhabitants of the Caribbean country, while more than 7.4 million have booster doses , according to data from the Minsap. EFE
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