The Cuban government will donate a shipment of the Cuban Soberana Plus vaccine against the novel coronaviruses disease to Syria on January 7, 2022.
Cuba has a higher percentage of its population getting the vaccine against Covid-19 than most of the world. The United Arab Emirates has a better vaccine record than any other country.
The tiny Communist-run Caribbean island has achieved this milestone by producing its own vaccine, even as it struggles to keep supermarket shelves stocked amid a decades-old U.S. trade embargo.
Helen Yaffe, a Cuba expert and lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, told CNBC that it was an incredible feat.
It has not just come out of the blue, so those of us who have studied it are not surprised. It is the result of a conscious government policy of state investment in the sector.
The Cuban population has been fully inoculated against Covid with three doses, and another 7% have been partially inoculated, according to official statistics compiled by Our World in Data.
The children from the age of two began receiving the vaccine several months ago. The country's health authorities are trying to limit the spread of the highly transmissible omicron Covid variant by giving booster shots to the entire population.
The country of 11 million is the only one in Latin America and the Caribbean that has produced a shot for Covid.
John Kirk, a professor at the Latin America program of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, told CNBC that the small country's ability to produce its own vaccines and immunizations is extraordinary.
The Cuban vaccine is seen as the best way to get vaccine by the year 2025.
Cuba has developed five different Covid vaccines, including Abdala, which Cuba says provides up to 90% protection against Covid when three doses are administered.
Cuba has engaged in two virtual exchanges of information with the World Health Organization to initiate the Emergency Use Listing process for its vaccines, but the vaccine clinical trial data has yet to undergo international scientific peer review.
Cuba uses a different vaccine technology than the U.S., which uses a different vaccine technology. They are cheap to produce, can be manufactured at scale, and do not require deep freezing.
It has prompted international health officials to tout the shots as a potential source of hope for the global south, particularly as low vaccination rates persist. Less than 10% of the African population have been fully vaccined, while 70% of the European Union population have.
Cuba's vaccines would have to be approved by the WHO for this to happen. Cuba's health officials say that the vetting process of the WHO has slowed progress in the development of vaccines.
Vicente Verez, head of Cuba's Finlay Vaccine Institute, said last month that the U.N. health agency was assessing Cuba's manufacturing facilities to a "first-world standard."
The documents and data will be submitted to the WHO in the first quarter of 2022. The shots would be made available throughout the world if the WHO approved them.
Yaffe said that many people in the global south see the Cuban vaccine as their best hope for getting vaccine by the year 2025.
She said that the omicron variant affects all of us because it affects the population because they have almost no coverage.
A man wearing a face mask walks down a street in Havana, Cuba, in October of 2021.
Kirk agreed that the potential approval of Cuba's nationally produced Covid vaccines would have an enormous significance for developing countries.
Kirk said that there are places in Africa that don't have the ability to store global north vaccines because they don't require ultra-low temperatures.
Cuba, unlike other countries or pharmaceutical companies, has offered to share its vaccine production expertise with low-income countries.
Cuba's goal is not to make a fast buck, but to keep the planet healthy. Kirk said that making an honest profit but not an excessive one would be a good thing.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO chief, warned last month that a "tsunami" of Covid cases driven by the omicron variant was so huge and so quick that it had overwhelmed health systems worldwide.
More than 100 countries are on track to miss the U.N. health agency's target for 70% of the world to be fully vaccine free by July.
The World Health Organization said last year that the world was likely to have enough Covid vaccine doses in the year 2022, to fully inoculate the entire global adult population.
Canada, the U.K., and Japan are some of the countries that are blocking a patent-waiver proposal for Covid vaccines.
The WHO, health experts, civil society groups, trade unions, former world leaders, international medical charities, and human rights organizations have all underscored the importance of waiving certain intellectual property rights during the Pandemic.
The seven-day average of daily Covid cases in Cuba increased to 2,063 by the end of January, reflecting an almost 10-fold increase since the end of December.
The number of omicron Covid cases is increasing in the Americas region. The Pan American Health Organization has warned that a rise in cases may lead to more hospitalizations and deaths.
In Cuba, public health measures such as tight-fitting masks are mandatory and PAHO has called on countries to accelerate vaccination coverage to reduce Covid transmission.
Cuba has one of the strongest vaccine records in the world. She told CNBC that Cuba would be able to administer its domestically produced Covid vaccine quickly.
Yaffe said that it wasn't speculation. Understanding their public health care system was the basis of the project. They have family doctor and nurse clinics in every neighborhood.
Students with their mother are being given a vaccine against a new coronaviruses at a school in Venezuela on December 13, 2021.
It means health authorities can quickly deliver vaccines to the island's population because many of these clinics are located in rural and hard-to-reach areas.
The movement of vaccine hesitancy is something that we are seeing in many countries.
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