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One of Cuba’s coronavirus vaccines has shown 62% efficacy in late stage trials, using just two of the three recommended doses.
Phase 3 interim results presented this weekend for the Soberana 2 vaccine, named after the Spanish word for sovereign, have exceeded the efficacy thresholds required for approval by regulators and health agencies around the world, including the World Health Organization.
Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director general of the country’s Finlay Vaccine Institute, said this was a very encouraging result “achieved in a scenario of circulating viral variants”.
Cuban officials said last month that the Beta variant, first identified in South Africa, had become dominant in the country. This variant showed the greatest degree of immune evasion – or lack of response – across vaccines, although Soberana 2’s results appear to offer hope.
Vérez Bencomo told reporters he expected late stage results from the three-dose regimen to be “of course better.” The 62 percent figure refers to a two-dose regimen.
Cuba has several vaccine candidates in development and has started to deploy two: Abdala and Soberana 2. All vaccines are protein-based, which means that some of the peak protein of the virus has been deployed to train the system. immune system to repel the virus. These types of vaccines are generally cheaper and easier to manufacture.
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Officials told reporters they expected to be able to seek full emergency approval from the country’s drug monitoring agency in the coming weeks. A preprint and full results were not yet available, although this was a common occurrence with interim analyzes of other vaccines during the pandemic. Health officials said the data was analyzed by a group of independent experts.
WHO, which is in the early stages of evaluating Cuban vaccines as part of its emergency listing process, welcomed the news. Soumya Swaminathan, the health agency’s chief scientist, said she was eager to see the full data.
“Vaccines with good efficacy and safety profiles that meet WHO benchmarks are welcome. The world needs more supplies and vaccines that have easier storage conditions, are easy to manufacture and scale, and affordable are welcome, ”she told the Financial Times.
“Transferring technology from the most promising candidates to manufacturers around the world is the best way to increase supplies to meet global demand. “
Global health officials have said a wide range of vaccinations are needed to ensure the pandemic is contained.
Cuban officials said they would be open to licensing intellectual property around vaccines with a small profit margin to subsidize the country’s universal health system.
Cuba, which has been an exporter of vaccines for years, remains under an American embargo, with disastrous consequences on its economy and its health system. He has developed other coronavirus drugs, such as Jusvinza, which is used in hospital patients with Covid-19 who are critically ill.
There have been 166,368 confirmed cases to date in the country, with 1,148 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
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