Cuba exports homegrown ‘Abdala’ COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam

Cuba: Cuba, for the first time, has exported its homegrown three-shot Abdala COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam. This was the initial shipment sent by the island country to Vietnam.

Cuba has contracted to supply five million doses to the South-East Asian country, and this shipment is a part of it. Cuban scientists have developed three homegrown vaccines against the coronavirus, which are still waiting to receive official verification from the World Health Organisation – WHO.

The export was made on Saturday. State-run pharmaceutical corporation BioCubaFarma in a tweet, cited that earlier this week, they had produced enough doses to meet a target to vaccinate more than 90% of the local population by the month of mid-November.

The pharmaceutical corporation further noted that it has the ability to make 100 million doses of the – Abdala, Soberana 2 and Soberana Plus vaccines, which it stated has recently reduced by about 90 per cent the risk of becoming severely ill or dying from the disease.

The vice-president of BioCubaFarma – Mayda Mauri, stated, “Once we meet the demand of domestic supply, Cuba will then start supplying vaccines to other nations, including Iran and Venezuela. There are very advanced discussions and exchanges on regulatory matters with Argentina and with other nations in various regions of the world.”

As per to the media house – Reuters, Vietnam, Argentina and Mexico have stated that they hope to create the Cuban vaccines soon.

The Caribbean nation has been hardly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which left a huge impact on the economy of the region, affecting the main sector of revenue that is – tourism. Caribbean nations are now opening their borders for tourists, controlling the spread of COVID-19 mutant.

According to the statistics, to date, a total of 8,879,811 individuals have received their first doses that are 78.4 % of the population, while 43.4% of the population has received their second jab of the vaccine and are fully vaccinated now.