Venezuela will produce a Cuban anti-Covid vaccine, up to two million doses per month from August, President Nicolas Maduro announced on Sunday. “We signed an agreement to produce in our laboratories (…) two million doses per month of the Abdala vaccine, around August, September”, declared on television the head of state, including Cuba is a close ally.
Four Cuban vaccines in preparation
The president also announced that his country would participate in phase 3 clinical trials of this vaccine candidate, with which Havana had already started to vaccinate 124,000 health workers at the end of March as part of a large-scale test among populations in risk.
Cuban scientists are working on four vaccine candidates: Mambisa (in phase 1), Soberana 1 (in phase 2), Soberana 2, Abdala (in phase 3) as well as a fifth, Soberana +, reformulation of Soberana 1 for people recovering from the disease. The Cuban government plans to launch its vaccination campaign in June, with what would then be the first coronavirus vaccine designed and produced in Latin America.
Agreements “with Russia, China and other countries”
The Venezuelan president added that his government was in discussions to sign vaccine production agreements “with Russia, China and other countries”. Venezuela has so far authorized the Russian vaccine Sputnik V and that of the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm. Less than a million doses have reached the country. The government also announced that it had paid just over half the amount required to purchase 11.3 million doses of the vaccine through the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covax mechanism.
–
