Cuba: US embargo delays population’s immunization campaign

The coronavirus vaccination campaign seems to be in trouble Cuba due to the US embargo.

“It must be said that we did not vaccinate more Cubans because we did not have the resources to make more vaccines, people need to know that,” said Yuri Valdes, a senior fellow at the Finley Institute for Vaccines. Invited politicians from around the world to discuss lifting the US embargo, which has been in force since 1962.

Dose insufficiency “is not due to lack of technical knowledge, but to the fact that we did not have the resources, as they are blocked” by the USA, insisted the scientist.

And if Joe Biden’s government “probably does not have time to reconsider its entire policy towards Cuba” it must reconsider its dimensions concerning “Cubans hospitalized and all Cubans in the process of being vaccinated”. he judged.

“We have to persuade the US government to do something, because that can make the difference between whether people die or not,” he said.

Of the five candidate vaccines developed by Cuban scientists, two are in the final stages of clinical trials and are expected to receive emergency authorization from the authorities, which will no doubt take place in June.

However, faced with a second wave of infections, the island authorities began vaccinating the population in the most affected areas on May 12th. So far, some 800,000 people have been vaccinated. Havana wants 70% of the population to be immunized by the end of August.

The chairman of the International Relations Committee, Alberto Nounies, stressed that “the United States has intensified its aggression against Cuba in the midst of the pandemic” by imposing 240 sanctions on former Republican President Donald Trump, to which the Democratic Party has so far has left intact.

Cuban scientists have repeatedly stressed in recent months that the embargo has complicated efforts to purchase reagents, syringes and other materials.

In recent weeks, civil society organizations, particularly in Chile, Spain, Italy and the United States, have taken the initiative to raise funds to buy 20 million syringes and ship them to the Caribbean.

In April, the Swiss government and Medicuba Europe, a non-governmental organization, provided $ 600,000 in funding to Cuba to buy syringes.

Despite the second wave being hit, compared to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuba, with a population of 11.2 million, has a much lower death toll from the new coronavirus pandemic, with 933 deaths due to COVID. -19 out of a total of 138,899 cases of SARS-CoV-2 (12 / 1,169 in 24 hours).