Faced with an increase in cases that shakes its health system, the country has made vaccinating children a condition before the reopening of schools.
If other countries, such as China and Venezuela, have announced their intention to also vaccinate children against Covid-19, Cuba is the first to do so. A national vaccination campaign for children and adolescents aged two to 18 years opened on the island on Friday 3 September.
This campaign is initially aimed at teenagers aged 12 and over, before being extended to children aged between two and 11 as of 15 September.
The communist government made the vaccination of children a condition for the reopening of schools. They have been closed since March 2020 and only reopened briefly, for a few weeks, at the end of the year, before closing again in January. Students and students must since then follow the classes on television, and must do so again from Monday, the day of return to Cuba. Once the campaign is over, the government intends to reopen the establishments in a phased manner in October and November.
This campaign will be carried out with the Cuban Abdala and Soberana vaccines. At night, the Medicines Regulatory Agency (Cecmed) announced that it had authorized the emergency use of the Sovereign 2 vaccine, one of the vaccines used in this campaign, for children and adolescents from two to 18 years old. The composition of Cuban vaccines, not recognized by the WHO, is based on a recombinant protein, the same technique used by the American Novavax.
The island of 11.2 million inhabitants has 672,599 cases, including 5,538 deaths. By early August, 95,100 Cuban minors had contracted Covid and seven died from it.