Cuban authorities hope coronavirus jabs will help stem a recent, rapid rise in COVID-19 infections on the island. There is a health clinic on every corner in Havana, each with a family doctor and nurse.
Over the last weeks, these health workers have been out visiting their patients in the Cuban capital, from the solares warren-like buildings where whole families live in single rooms to smarter apartments in crumbling art deco buildings where memories of wealth still show in grand windows looking out over the Florida Straits.
They have been telling residents the coronavirus vaccine has arrived and giving out appointments for jabs. This scene has been repeated across the city, and so long as there are enough syringes to administer doses will soon be repeated across the country.
In the story of the pandemic, Cuba is beginning this new chapter on a cliffhanger. Having spent 2020 largely keeping the virus beyond its shores, the number of infected patients is now rising fast, with a record-breaking 2,698 new daily cases on Saturday, and a seven-day average now above 2,000. Cuba is facing the biggest surge in the Caribbean.
And yet, last week the country announced that Abdala, one of the five vaccines Cuba has created in its own laboratories a hugely impressive achievement for a country of 11 million with catastrophically stretched resources has an efficacy of 92.28 percent. This compares to Pfizer-BioNTechs 95 percent, Modernas 95 percent and AstraZenecas 76 percent.
Earlier this month it claimed another of its vaccines, Soberana-02, had an efficacy of 62 percent after two doses. On Thursday, its scientists said that a booster would bring this up to between 85 and 95 percent (Abdala also comes in three shots).
Caveats follow hard on the heels of the numbers, which could shift in the face of new variants. Domestically, the vaccines have been tested on a population that has until now been untroubled by any serious COVID-19 wave, and they have yet to be put to international scrutiny.
I dont have any reason to believe there is fraud or manipulation, said Amílcar Pérez Riverol, post-doctoral fellow in molecular biology at São Paulo State University in Brazil and a veteran of Cubas laboratories. This is biotechnology and eventually the general vaccination will reveal how effective they are. But like every single member of the scientific community, I would like to see the data.
In Havana, where the population is increasingly spooked by the rising infection rate, the efficacy results have caused widespread joy. After such a hard year of queues and food shortages, its so good to have something to celebrate, said a woman leaving a local doctors clinic last week.
The news even reignited the 9pm applause for Cubas health workers. Cubans who venerate their health service kept up their daily applause for months, until it finally tailed off under the strain of day-to-day life. There are currently food and medicine shortages and galloping inflation. And then there are the increasing numbers of infected patients.
