Cuban Vaccine Candidate Soberana 02 Starts Trials in Iran

Iran began on Monday the third phase of the clinical trial of the Cuban vaccine "Soberana 02", called "Pasteur" in the Persian country, which will involve 24,000 volunteers from seven provinces in the north, center and south of Iran.

The start of the trials in Iran took place with an official ceremony at the University of Medical Sciences in the city of Isfahan in central Iran, with the presence of the Iranian Minister of Health, Saíd Namakí, and with the injection of the vaccine to four volunteers.

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Mohamad Mehdi Guya, the director of the Infectious Diseases Management Center of the Ministry of Health, and the director of Iran's Pasteur Institute, Alireza Biglari, were the first two injected, who said, "Today, our country has achieved one of the best, most effective and dynamic coronavirus vaccines in the world at the Pasteur Institute."

Namaki added that "researchers in the field of vaccine production did their job, there is no holding back and Iran is the brightest country in the field of COVID-19 vaccine production in the region."

According to the agreement signed last January between the Finlay Vaccine Institute (IFV) in Havana and the Pasteur Institute, the third and last testing phase of Soberana 02 will also be carried out in the Persian country. Then the technology will be transferred to produce the drug locally.

This candidate began the final stage of clinical trials in Havana on March 8 with 44,010 volunteers. At the end of the month, the tests were extended with a parallel intervention study of another 150,000 people.

To carry out the tests in Iran, some 100,000 doses of the vaccine arrived in Tehran in March, to be tested on volunteers aged between 18 and 80 years.

Biglarí explained on Iranian state television that it is planned to produce "2,000,000 doses" of this serum "every month" and that at the beginning of June it will be supplied for general vaccination in the Persian country.

Eight Universities of Medical Sciences in Mazandaran, Babol, Isfahan, Yazd, Kerman, Hormozgan, Zanyan and Hamedan are participating in the trials.

In Yazd and Zanyan, a booster dose, corresponding to another Cuban vaccine candidate, SoberanaPlus, will be administered in addition to the two doses of the vaccine, according to Biglari, who also explained that "the booster dose can be effective in boosting the immunity of people who have previously been infected with COVID-19.'

Iran, which is currently in the fourth wave of the pandemic with daily peaks in infections, is locally developing several vaccine preparations and just yesterday began the third phase of clinical trials of its most advanced local vaccine called COVID-19 COVIRAN Barekat.

The total death toll in the country is about 70,000 people and the number of infected people is 2.4 million.

In total 165,655 people have received both doses of a vaccine in Iran, and some 618,362 have received only the first injection.