COVID-19
Latin American breakthrough on vaccines
The tiny Caribbean island of Cuba has developed a vaccine equally effective as the Pfizer and Moderna shots and superior to AstraZeneca or Sputnik V.
According to the Spanish daily El País, the “Abdala” vaccine is 92.28 per cent effective against COVID-19 after three doses, while a second Cuban vaccine, “Soberana 02”, has 62 per cent efficiency after two doses, with greater efficiency after a third dose.
The Abdala results were obtained in the third phase of trials with a group of 48,000 volunteers conducted by the Cuban Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.
The vaccine is now being considered by the World Health Organization as part of its Covax program.
“This is excellent news and fills us with optimism in the region, where there is still a large deficit of vaccines,” Peruvian epidemiologist José Moya, from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), told El País.
The development of a Latin American vaccine is an important breakthrough, as South America has become the global epicentre of the pandemic.
At the end of June, the region was registering 323 new infections per day per million of population.
This compares with 40 infections per day per million of population in North America, 59 in Europe and 29 in Asia.
Trends paint an even bleaker picture. While mass vaccinations in North America, Europe and Asia have reduced the infection rate considerably, in South America there has been a relatively constant rise in infections, fuelled by new variants and a shortage of vaccines.