Cuba rolls out mass vaccines while awaiting study results
HAVANA (AP) — The jab didn't even hurt, and Mabel Aguilera figures it may finally let her see granddaughters on the other side of Cuba who she hasn't glimpsed during many months of pandemic restrictions.
“Sometimes I thought I wouldn't be able to stand not seeing my granddaughters,” said the 75-year-old woman, who got the shot at a clinic near her Havana home and has had to make do with phone calls and social media to keep in contact with relatives in the island's far east.
“Talking is not like touching them,” she said Friday while in a post-inoculation observation area. They send me photos on Facebook but that’s not enough,” she added on the verge of tears.
Aguilera is among hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have begun receiving new, locally produced vaccines against COVID-19 in the past few days as the socialist government has ramped up an inoculation campaign — even before releasing formal Phase III data on the vaccines' effectiveness and safety.
The campaign is being closely watched by many across Latin America and the world who see Cuba's vaccines as a possible way to ease global shortages.
The island’s health minister, José Angel Portal Miranda, announced on May 7 that officials are still processing information from the unusually large Phase III trials of the two vaccine candidates, which covered 400,000 people overall. But he said that beginning mass vaccines now "has more benefits than risks. ... The number of sick and deceased is going to decrease.”
Officials also have not given data on results from trials in other countries, such as Iran, that were reportedly testing the Cuban candidates.
The vaccines are a point of pride for a small and relatively poor nation of 11 million people that has prioritized its medical sector and has long boasted of exporting...
