Cuban scientist key piece of vaccine against COVID: “There may be a new global peak”

Rolando Pajón, a Cuban scientist which was one of the key pieces of the Moderna vaccine against the coronavirus, warned that a new peak of infections may occur worldwide.

In an interview granted to the media Week, The expert, who was medical director in Latin America of the Moderna vaccine project, argued that "the climate crisis will leave us on the verge of another pandemic" because "there are changes in human behavior, migratory flows and hyperconnectivity that makes a disease infectious disease does not concentrate in a population, but rather spreads.

In his opinion, it is possible that a pandemic will be repeated and he warned that the coronavirus has not disappeared, although many people have "let their guard down."

"In the United States, between 250 and 400 people die every day from the disease. And although the risk of hospitalization and death in children is lower, it is not zero. In the pediatric population it is higher than other viruses, such as chickenpox," he explained. half.

The disease variant currently circulating, a subvariant of Omicron, mostly sickens people who do not have a booster dose, so he urged getting the most up-to-date vaccine possible.

He also referred to another virus circulating in Latin America and the danger posed by cytomegalovirus, a latent virus that can be transferred from a pregnant woman to babies and cause neurological consequences, such as vision or hearing problems and motor coordination problems.

They are currently working on phase three of the vaccine against the virus to "reduce the occurrence of infections in newborns through vaccination in adults of reproductive age."

Rolando Pajon He fled his country 15 years ago, when he worked at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Cuba and had to travel to Calgary, Canada, as part of a research project.

The Cuban began studying new vaccine candidates against human respiratory pathogens and taking them to proof of concept in humans.

In 2018 he joined the Moderna staff to work on flu immunizations that used messenger RNA technology. Until COVID-19 arrived and the scientific community threw itself into the search for a vaccine.