The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) approved a credit of 46.7 million euros for Cuba with the aim of producing 200 million vaccines against the coronavirus and other medical supplies.
A CABEI statement from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, also released by the official website of the island Cubadebate this Wednesday, indicated that the objective of the financing is the “strengthening of the Cuban pharmaceutical industry to combat COVID-19”, the manufacture of injectable antibiotics and sera, as well as diagnostic tests among others.
In addition, according to Dante Mossi, president of the banking institution, “it will also contribute to the economic reactivation of the country.”
The credit conditions were not specified for Cuba, a CABEI member country but outside the region and which usually faces difficulties in obtaining financing from banking organizations due to the United States sanctions that weigh on the Caribbean nation.
The support will be supervised by the United Nations Development Program.
Cuba is the only Latin American nation that has its own vaccines: Soberana 02, Soberana Plus and Abdala, whose endorsement in the World Health Organization is in process, but which have authorization from countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Vietnam, Iran and Nicaragua. The last four also imported doses for their population.
The island is experiencing a resurgence in these weeks with more than 2,000 infected each day – in December there were less than 100 -, after the opening of its airports and part of its economy in November, suffocated by the pandemic and the sanctions of the United States increased in these years to pressure a change in the political model and that fell on the population in the form of shortages of medicines and food. The presence of the contagious omicron variant was also detected.
A report from the Ministry of Health indicated this Wednesday that the accumulated since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 to date is 985,402 people, of which there are 8,330 deaths. 86% of the population over two years old was vaccinated and reinforcements are currently being placed.
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