‘We aim at celebrating International Health Workers’ Day on May 1 by applying those last doses to all the volunteers included,’ Verena Mucio assured, director of Clinical Research at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), leader of this project.

The specialist recalled that on April 19, the last two weeks of the application of the third dose to all the volunteers began, of which 21,909 have already been vaccinated as part of the process.

She detailed that the 3rd phase of clinical research stage with this candidate against Covid-19 began on March 22 by applying the first dose to 48,290 subjects during six weeks in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo and Granma while the administration of the second dose concluded on April 17, with 47,620 volunteers, and satisfactory results.

Dr. Mucio advanced that once the vaccination stage of the volunteers is concluded, the follow-up of those people will begin in order to assessed the appearance of positive cases with symptomatic infection.

This will allow us comparing the proportions between vaccinated and placebo groups to evaluate the vaccine efficacy, a process that will begin on May 3, noted the director of Clinical Research of the CIGB.

Abdala is also part of intervention studies in risk groups, among them healthcare personnel and the BioCubaFarma business group, in several provinces of the country.

The CIGB is also developing the vaccine candidate against Covid-19 ‘Mambisa,’ the only one that is administered intranasally; while Soberana 01, Soberana 02 and Soberana PLUS, from the Finlay Institute of Vaccines, are the other proposals of Cuba to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

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