Cuba approves home-grown vaccine 'Abdala’ for emergency use against COVID-19

Cuba on Friday, July 9, approved its home-grown COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use named ‘Abdala’. The country known for manufacturing nearly 80 percent of all its inoculations announced on Friday that the CECMED health regulators gave a go-ahead to the Latin American coronavirus jab for kick-starting the country’s mass vaccination campaign. Last month, makers of Adbala announced in a statement that the locally produced vaccine candidate had turned back 92 percent efficacy in neutralizing the COVID-19 virus post three doses. The country manufactured as many as five coronavirus vaccines and started inoculation in May using Abdala and Soberana 2 even before the emergency approvals, according to several reports.

As of Friday, July 9, at least 6.8 million of Cuba's 11.2 million people have already been administered one shot of the homegrown vaccine. Nearly 1.6 million have been “fully” vaccinated with the three doses regime as the country ramped up the vaccination drive to curb the infections from the variant. According to the state-run BioCubaFarma laboratory’s statement issued last month, Abdala "shows the efficacy of 92.28 percent in its three-dose scheme.” This met the WHO’s 50-percent efficacy threshold for the jab approval that can further initiate the global rollout.

The CECMED announced in a release that Cuba’s homegrown vaccine had met requirements for quality, safety, and efficacy, while the makers Aica Laboratories stated that the vaccine had gone through a rigorous process of “evaluation of the dossier and inspections of the plants involved."

The vaccine’s approval was done on Friday by the country's regulatory body which paved the way for a mass vaccination program in the Caribbean nation. Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology that developed and manufactured Abdala, announced effectiveness of the vaccine saying that a three-dose schedule, with 14-day intervals between shots, had proven to produce the antibodies against the novel coronavirus.

Cuba reveals the third COVID antigen under making 

At a press conference held in Havana on Friday, separately, the Cuban health authorities also revealed the third antigen against the virus named Mambisa which is currently under the development phase. “This vaccine is intranasal and taken in the form of a few drops introduced into the nasal cavities. It can be used in convalescents and combined along with other vaccines can increase immunity against COVID-19,” The Associated Press explained. Currently, the Latin American nation has been reeling under the unprecedented surge of the variant wave with the central province of Matanzas as the epicenter where the Varadero Beach tourist resorts are located.