Thread by @vipintukur

Let’s focus on a small communist country of 11 million people #Cuba. Let’s see what Cuba is doing with their multiple vaccines & on Covid front! All the COVID vaccines developed in Cuba are what are known as protein subunit conjugate vaccines. 1/

Cuba now has five vaccines in various stages. Soberana 1, Soberana 2 and Soberna Plus, Abdala and Mambisa.
One is a nasal spray still in clinical trials. 2/

Cuba didn’t want to rely on the whims of foreign governments or international pharmaceutical companies to immunize its people. Cuba didn’t even sign up for the #COVAX program. 3/

None of them have yet been authorized by the #WHO or any other major international regulator.

But they’ve allowed Cuba to boast one of the highest COVID vaccination rates in the world. More than 85% of the island nation is fully immunized against the virus. 4/

It even tops every country in Europe except Portugal. The country is even giving the shots to kid as young as 2 years old.

At a time when many other #LMICs continue to struggle to get enough doses, Cuba is exporting vaccine to Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua and Vietnam. 5/

Their priorities were to focus in working on the vaccine and get the clinical trials done so that people could get immunized. Not to write a paper or get that paper published. 6/

Are their vaccines working?

If you compare recent cases and deaths in Cuba with Israel, Cuba does not seem to have had an Omicron wave of anything like the same magnitude. Lots of possible reasons, but it suggests their vaccines work. 7/

Throughout the pandemic, they’ve done what so many other nations couldn’t — controlled their own fate when it came to getting vaccines. 8/

wbhm.org/npr_story_post…