The application in Mexico of the Cuban Abdala vaccine to those over 18 as a booster dose since last December 21 has begun with little influx to hospitals and doubts about the Cuban vaccine.
Mexican specialists consulted by the newspaper The country This Saturday they raised their doubts about the effectiveness of the Cuban vaccine and its immunization capacity against the variants circulating at this time.
“It is not the appropriate vaccine to be used as a booster because it is directed at the original strain, there are no studies for such use and this will not protect us against the omicron variants,” he told The country Verónica Athié, doctor in Immunology and member of the Let's Vaccinate with Evidence initiative.
Athié points to the lack of studies that corroborate the effectiveness of the Cuban vaccine.
“When a vaccine is developed, a small piece of one of the microorganism's proteins is chosen as the target. For the Abdala vaccine they chose the RBD domain of the SARS-CoV2 spike protein. This domain is exactly the one that has changed the most with the mutations of the virus,” he argues.
In this way, while some Mexicans go to get vaccinated because they consider that “if we don't get it we will be worse off,” others complain that there is not enough information about Abdala.
“Actually, I was very hesitant, because there is not enough information or the same evidence that exists for other vaccines. I don't know if it serves as reinforcement. I only did it because I got my last vaccine on October 21, 2021, that is, I had more than a year without a booster or anything. This is the only thing there is in Mexico, it's not like we have options. I thought it was better to have something than nothing. But I am not satisfied or calm,” Sandra Barba, 36, who received her booster dose at a hospital in the south of Mexico City, told El País.
In principle, the Mexican government planned to use the Cuban vaccine in children and adolescents, but finally, due to the lack of information in this regard, they decided to reverse this decision.
Last Thursday, a second shipment of 4.9 million doses Cuban vaccine Abdala arrived in Mexico to be used in the coronavirus vaccination campaign in that country.
The first shipment, with 4,092,500 doses, had arrived last November 25 as part of the signing of agreements signed by both governments.
Last September, the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced the signing of an agreement with Cuba to the purchase of 9 million doses of Abdala, which would be used in children between 5 and 11 years old.
In December 2021, Mexico authorized the emergency use of the Cuban Abdala vaccine, a decision that led to criticism in the Mexican medical sector, since the World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet given its approval to this or any of the Cuban vaccines against the coronavirus.
“The only vaccine against COVID-19 that has been published, that has undergone reviews by health authorities and that has been approved for use in children aged 5-11 years is Pfizer with a dose of 10 mcgs. Any other vaccine, Abdala included, has not been authorized by the authorities in charge of monitoring and reviewing its safety and effectiveness in this age group,” Cipatli Ayuzo, member of the Mexican Academy of Pediatrics, declared last April.
For her part, Mexican Rep. America Rangel has accused Lopez Obrador of put the health of millions of Mexican children at risk that they would receive the Cuban drug.
Rangel, from the opposition National Action Party (PAN), accused AMLO of financing the Cuban regime through the purchase of vaccines, being able to immunize its population with others of similar prices and certified by world health authorities.
Although the Cuban government said that it would present the Abdala vaccine to the WHO for approval for emergency use, nothing has been known about said validation process by the international organization.
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