Designed by the Havana-based Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), this vaccine is administered to volunteers between 19 and 80 years of age, those of the Pharmaceutical Laboratories (AICA), the National Center for the Production of Laboratory Animals and the 26 de Julio Teaching Polyclinic.

Other volunteers from the Havana-based Immunoassay Research Center, the Luis Diaz Soto Central Military Hospital, the Medical and Surgical Research Center and the Scientific Research Center, as well as the different headquarters of the Roberto Escudero pharmaceutical laboratories in Cerro municipality and its dependency in La Lisa municipality, are also included.

Common in clinical-epidemiological studies, the controlled intervention trial aims to assess the direct and indirect effects of the vaccination with the candidate developed by the CIGB in population groups at high risk of contracting the virus, diseases and spreading the Covid-19 contagion.

The research seeks to demonstrate the direct and indirect effects on the prevention of the symptomatic disease, assess the effect in preventing the severity of the disease and verify the consequences of the shot on SARS-CoV-2 mortality.

The vaccination with Abdala at this stage will consist of three doses and it will seek to reduce symptomatic infection among those vaccinated by 60 percent 14 days after the third dose.

Abdala is going through Phase III of clinical trials with 48,000 volunteers from eastern Santiago de Cuba, Granma and Guantanamo provinces.

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