LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th March, 2021) The progress of Cuba's COVID-19 program with several vaccine candidates in different stage trials sets a prospect for low-income countries from the so-called Global South to access immunization, Professor Helen Yaffe, a Cuba expert at the University of Glasgow, told Sputnik on Monday.
"For the global South, Cuba's vaccine is very good news, as it can give them hope of seeing an end of the impact of the pandemic much faster than if they rely on the big biotech giants," Yaffe said.
Yaffe, the author of "We are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World" and other books on the small island nation, recalled that the Cuban government has pledged to produce 100 million doses of the Soberana 02 vaccine once it is approved by the country's regulator.
Of that amount, 20 to 30 million doses will probably be used domestically and the subsequent doses will be exported or donated to low-income countries, the professor explained.
According to Yaffe, the fact that Cuba is willing to share its vaccines with other developing countries is particularly important in light of reports that the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer tried to "bully" countries like Argentina and Brazil, asking them to hand over national assets in exchange for its vaccine.
When asked what reasons prompted Cuba to invest in researching and producing COVID-19 vaccines, the expert noted that the Caribbean island nation has an "incredible world-leading" biotechnological industry that was exporting biotech products to 49 countries before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Another issue is whether Cuba would have had access to any vaccine that was produced by a US biotech because of the Washington-imposed blockade on the country, Yaffe said, recalling that the 60-year-old measures prevent US companies or their subsidiaries around the world from doing business with the Cuban government.
She also said that poor countries like Cuba that have been extremely hard hit by the pandemic cannot cope with the "ruinously expensive" prices that range from $10-35 per dose that big pharmaceutical laboratories are charging for their vaccines.
"For all these reasons, it so important and it is quite clear why one of the Cuban vaccines is called Soberana (Spanish for sovereign), because it gives Cuba its independence and its ability to prioritize the health and welfare of its population," Yaffe stressed.
So far, Cuba has been testing five COVID-19 vaccine candidates � Soberana 01, Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus, developed by the Finlay Vaccine Institute, and Mambisa and Abdala, produced by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, with very encouraging results.
