Cuba to vaccinate against Covid-19 around 1,000,000 more next week

According to journalist Leticia Martinez on her Twitter account, at a meeting of Cuban scientists with the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Diaz-Canel, experts pointed out that the doses for that achievement will be distributed in the upcoming hours.

In order to reach that number of vaccinated people, another 22 municipalities throughout the country will be incorporated to the process of mass immunization against Covid-19, Martinez explained.

In sum, up to August 16, 12, 225, 378 doses of both Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus candidates and Abdala vaccine have been administered in Cuba.

Some 3,47,933 Cubans have already been fully immunized (three injections), which represents 27.1 percent of the country’s entire population (11,300,000 approximately).

In the analysis, they also presented the preliminary results of the process and detailed that, of the 25,608 immunized, there were 119 deaths from Covid-19, for a lethality of 0.46 percent; while among those 492,060 not vaccinated having caught the novel coronavirus, there were 3,904 from Covid-19.

‘This represents a lethality rate of 0.78 percent,’ Martinez tweeted.

The figure of 119 deaths also symbolizes a lethality rate of 0.004 percent of the total number of people immunized in Cuba as of August 14 (2,655,387).

Meanwhile, in Havana, a province which has already concluded the vaccination against Covid-19 in all its municipalities, the lethality rate is 0.69 percent.

In that city, in the group of Covid-19 cases after vaccination (14,471), there were 37 deaths, for a lethality rate of 0.26 percent; and of those not immunized but diagnosed as infected (120,926), there were 904 deaths, for a 0.75 percent rate.

Regarding the clinical trials in pediatric ages, Vicente Verez, director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV), lead institution of the Soberana Pediatrics study, explained that the preliminary results are very encouraging, Martinez noted.

‘With two doses of Soberana 02, designed by the IFV, children aged 12 to 18, are raising antibodies at the level of three doses in adults (heterologous scheme of two injections of Soberana 02 plus one of Soberana Plus, also from the Finlay center).’

Cuba has two Covid-19 immunization schemes with over 90 percent efficacy against symptomatic disease.

Three doses of Abdala showed 92.28 and two administrations of Soberana 02 plus one of Soberana Plus, evidenced 91.2 percent efficacy.