Cuban COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Abdala Is Over 92% Effective

Journalist Leticia Martinez confirmed this Monday on her Twitter account that "the efficacy with three doses of Cuban-designed COVID-19 vaccine candidate Abdala is 92,28%. Biotech specialist Dr. Marta Ayala reported the scientific breakthrough.

Cuban President, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, visited the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) and presided over a ceremony to announce and celebrate the scientific breakthrough. While the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) is in charge of developing the pharmaceutical ingredient, Aica Laboratories is responsible for the formulation, filling, and packaging of Abdala. 

"With the joy of the efficacy of Soberana 02 with two doses, we are on our way to CIGB to share another great news. Stay tuned: the efficacy with three doses of Abdala will be an event that will multiply the pride," posted minutes later on Twitter the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

The Cuban President also quoted on his Twitter account Cuba's national hero: "I think of Martí, who wrote: "It is not the intelligence received and casual what gives man honor; but the way he uses it and saves it, there is but one way to endure, and that is to serve."

And under the #Fidel hashtag, who said: "Anyone who has a vocation for health, I invite him to study...There is an immense world that needs it".

He further added that "Hit by two pandemics (COVID-19 and the U.S blockade), our scientists from the Finlay Vaccine Institute and the CIGB, have jumped over all obstacles and have given us two very effective vaccines: Soberana 02 and Abdala."

"In less than 48 hours, our Cuban scientists have given our heroic people, who have resisted a criminal blockade tightened amid a pandemic, two powerful results. In two days, we will denounce the blockade before the world with two vaccines of our own", the President published. 

Abdala is named after the vaccine candidate created by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). It is currently in phase III clinical trials to assess its safety and immunogenicity against SARS-CoV-2.

Last Saturday, during a meeting of the Cuban Government with scientists, it was announced that the efficacy of Soberana 02, in its two doses, is 62%, which exceeds the requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO) for a vaccine candidate against COVID-19 to become a vaccine, which is 50%. 
 

The WHO also recommends that the confidence interval of the analysis of that efficacy exceeds 30 %, and Soberana 02 has confidence intervals above 40 %, so we can say that we are fulfilling the two requirements recommended by the Organization to consider a vaccine candidate as an effective vaccine, said the Finlay Vaccine Institute Director, Vicente Vérez Bencomo. 

The clinical trials with this candidate began their phase I last December 7, with 132 volunteers, which was later increased to 660 in phase II.  In the case of phase III, which began on March 22, the sample under study was more significant. It included 48,290 people who were vaccinated in six weeks, in periods of 0, 14, and 28 days, which required intense work by the participants.

Some 4,328,291 doses of the Soberana 02 and Abdala vaccine candidates have been administered in Cuba up to June 16 due to the sum of clinical trials, intervention studies, and health intervention in groups and territories at risk.