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Monday, February 17, 2025

Cuba to update domestic vaccine to battle Omicron

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1172 days ago
20211203
FILE PHOTO – Cuba has already started modifying its Soberana-02 vaccine to respond to the Omicron variant, a local researcher said this week.  (Image courtesy Al Jazeera; Ramon Espinosa/Pool via Reuters)

FILE PHOTO – Cuba has already started modifying its Soberana-02 vaccine to respond to the Omicron variant, a local researcher said this week. (Image courtesy Al Jazeera; Ramon Espinosa/Pool via Reuters)

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGEN­CIES

 

■ The is­land has a strong home­grown biotech­nol­o­gy in­dus­try and is ex­port­ing vac­cines to oth­er de­vel­op­ing na­tions ■

 

(AL JAZEERA) — Cuban re­searchers are up­grad­ing the is­land’s home­grown coro­n­avirus vac­cines to en­sure pro­tec­tion against the new Omi­cron vari­ant.

Vi­cente Verez, di­rec­tor of Cu­ba’s Fin­lay In­sti­tute for Vac­cines, said this week that it was clear the coun­try’s Sober­ana-02 vac­cine would con­tin­ue to pro­vide “a cer­tain lev­el of pro­tec­tion” against Omi­cron, but added the ex­tent of that pro­tec­tion was still un­cer­tain.

“We de­cid­ed as of last week to start de­vel­op­ing a Sober­ana Plus vari­ant hav­ing the Omi­cron RBD pro­tein,” Verez said on Tues­day, re­fer­ring to the re­cep­tor-bind­ing do­main (RBD), a key part of the virus lo­cat­ed on its “spike”.

“We have al­ready start­ed it, and that pro­tein is be­ing built at the mo­ment.”

In No­vem­ber, Verez said the Fin­lay In­sti­tute can pro­duce 10 mil­lion Sober­ana dos­es per month, the jour­nal Na­ture re­port­ed.

More than 81 per­cent of Cu­ba’s pop­u­la­tion of 11 mil­lion is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty.

Some glob­al vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers, in­clud­ing BioN­Tech, have ex­pressed guard­ed con­fi­dence that their vac­cines would of­fer strong pro­tec­tion against Omi­cron, which was des­ig­nat­ed a “vari­ant of con­cern” by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) last week.

Oth­ers, such as Mod­er­na, have raised the prospect of a ma­te­r­i­al drop in pro­tec­tion.

It is not yet clear whether Omi­cron is more trans­mis­si­ble than oth­er vari­ants, or if it caus­es more se­vere dis­ease.

Cu­ba has been un­der a US trade em­bar­go for years. At the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, of­fi­cials wor­ried they would not be able to ac­cess West­ern vac­cines due to the trade sanc­tions, so they set about pro­duc­ing their own.

Cu­ba has de­vel­oped an un­usu­al­ly large biotech sec­tor for a coun­try its size. It has made vac­cines avail­able to sev­er­al of its al­lies, in­clud­ing Viet­nam, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Iran.

FILE PHOTO – Parents wait to have their children vaccinated with the Soberana-02 COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in Havana, Cuba.  (Image courtesy Al Jazeera; Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

FILE PHOTO – Parents wait to have their children vaccinated with the Soberana-02 COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in Havana, Cuba. (Image courtesy Al Jazeera; Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

Sober­ana-02 is more than 90 per­cent ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing symp­to­matic COVID-19 in­fec­tion, when used in com­bi­na­tion with a re­lat­ed vac­cine, ac­cord­ing to a preprint study pub­lished by the re­search por­tal medRx­iv1 in No­vem­ber. That study was done be­fore the ar­rival of Omi­cron.

In de­vel­op­ing Sober­ana-02, Verez’s in­sti­tute drew on its ex­ist­ing con­ju­gate vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy. This in­volves tak­ing a pro­tein or sug­ar from a virus then chem­i­cal­ly link­ing it to a harm­less frag­ment of a neu­ro­tox­in pro­tein from the tetanus bac­teri­um, Na­ture re­port­ed.

“The com­bi­na­tion elic­its a stronger im­mune re­sponse than ei­ther com­po­nent alone. Con­ju­gate vac­cines against menin­gi­tis and ty­phoid are used around the world, and Cu­ba has been im­mu­niz­ing chil­dren with a vac­cine of this type for years,” ac­cord­ing to da­ta cit­ed by the jour­nal.

Ab­dala, a three-dose Cuban vac­cine, has been shown to be more than 92 per­cent ef­fec­tive in tri­als that in­clud­ed more than 48,000 par­tic­i­pants, but the full re­sults have not yet been pub­lished, ac­cord­ing to the da­ta.

Crit­ics have ac­cused Cu­ba’s gov­ern­ment and re­searchers of not be­ing trans­par­ent with their vac­cine ef­fi­ca­cy da­ta.

Cu­ba hopes to ex­tend ex­ports of its lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped vac­cines and has asked the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) to ap­prove them, which many coun­tries re­quire be­fore im­port­ing vac­cines.

In mid-Sep­tem­ber, Ha­vana launched a vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign for chil­dren aged be­tween two and 10 years old, mak­ing it one of the first na­tions to ap­prove vac­cines for that age group.

Cu­ba has yet to de­tect the Omi­cron vari­ant, but ear­li­er this week an­nounced it would tight­en re­stric­tions be­gin­ning De­cem­ber 4 on pas­sen­gers from some African coun­tries.

CubaCOVID-19Health


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