By Dr Michael Head, PhD, University of Southampton — The Conversation, 7 December 2021
Cuba has been quietly working on its own COVID vaccines, immunising its population and selling doses abroad, while the western world has written plenty about its high-profile COVID vaccines. Cuba’s two COVID vaccines — Abdala and Soberana 02 — appear to have performed very well in trials. Cuba has a long history of manufacturing its own vaccines and medicines, and its vaccine COVID coverage is among the best in the world, with around 90% of Cuba’s 11 million people having received at least one dose and 82% considered fully vaccinated.
Abdala is a protein subunit vaccine — a well-established design also used in the hepatitis B vaccine and the Novavax COVID vaccine. The proteins used are grown in specially engineered yeast cells. Soberana 02 uses a “conjugate” design, along the lines of meningitis or typhoid vaccines, containing a different part of the spike protein linked to a harmless extract from the tetanus toxin, which generates a stronger immune response. Soberana 02 is given as two doses with a booster (Soberana Plus) identified as beneficial.
A preprint published on 1 November 2021 of a Soberana phase 3 trial including 44,031 participants suggests that two doses of Soberana 02 with a booster of Soberana Plus are together 92% protective against symptomatic COVID. For Abdala, Cuban press releases in June and July 2021 reported the three-dose schedule is also reportedly 92% protective against symptomatic COVID and allegedly fully protective against severe disease and death.
Following a big spike in cases in August 2021 when vaccine coverage was still relatively low, new infections in Cuba have since declined greatly and remain low. Cuba has submitted both vaccines to the WHO for approval, which would improve the likelihood of them being used abroad by allies including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, Vietnam, Mexico and Argentina. So long as there’s unequal access to vaccines globally, the pandemic will continue — and so too the risk of new variants arising. This article has been republished under Creative Commons licence.