Coronavirus vaccines: Mexico licensed for emergency use in Abdala, Cuba

The Mexican Food and Drug Administration yesterday issued an emergency license for the Abdala vaccine against COVID-19, which has been developed and produced in Cuba.

“The urgent authorization for the Abdullah vaccine has been approved,” the Federal Committee for Health Risk Protection (COFEPRIS) said in a press release.

Abdallah thus became the tenth COVID-19 vaccine to be approved in Mexico, followed by Pfizer / BioNTech, AstraZeneca, CanSino Biologics, Sputnik V, Sinovac, Covaxin, Janssen, Moderna and Sinopharm.

The Mexican government has not yet announced whether it intends to buy quantities of this vaccine, or what it will be.

Cuban vaccines are based on the recombinant protein technique, which is also used by the American company Novavax and the French company Sanofi, and are 90% effective in preventing symptoms, according to Cuban scientists.

In addition to the country of origin, Abdallah has also received emergency licenses in Nicaragua, Vietnam and Venezuela. Caracas has signed an agreement with Havana that provides for the purchase of 12 million installments.

At the same time, sources told Reuters yesterday that the Mexican government had halved its order for doses of CanSino Biologics vaccine this year, as it became clear that it would be delivered the 35 million doses it had ordered from the Canadian pharmaceutical company.

Mexico, a country of 126 million people, is not far from the 300,000 deaths due to COVID-19 and the 4 million SARS-CoV-2 cases. To date, the country has purchased some 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

SOURCE: AMPE