Cuba has Highest Vaccination Rate in Latin America
80.9% of the Cuban population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, putting it in first place in the whole region. It’s also the only Latin American country to have produced its own jabs.
The Ministry of Health statistics show that out of 11,180,000 people, 9,048,689 have received at least one dose. 6,293,860 (56% of the population) has received two doses, 5,019,799 (44.3% of the population) is fully vaccinated which in Cuba requires three doses.
In second place is Uruguay with 78.9% of the population receiving at least one dose. The least vaccinated country in the Americas is Haiti at just 0.4%, equivalent to 43,000 people.
Cuba has largely used their own vaccines; Soberana 02 and Abdala and supplemented that with China’s Sinopharm in some regions.
The country’s resounding success is due in part to the country’s advanced biotech industry. Speaking to Kawsachun News, Cuba’s Ambassador in Bolivia, Danilo Sanchez, said;
“Cuba has been developing vaccines from long before the start of the Covid pandemic, for 30 years Cuban scientists have been developing a number of different types of vaccines. Today there are about 10 vaccines produced in Cuba that are used within the country for numerous illnesses. Cuba has managed this thanks to the initiative taken by Fidel Castro, decades ago, to develop Cuban science. We are a small country, 11 million people, our national territory is 1/10th of the size of Bolivia. We don’t have much in the way of natural resources so we have had to develop human talent in the midst of difficult conditions presented by the blockade. Cuba’s biotech sector isn’t new, BioCubaFarma is the name of this large complex that employs more than 20,000 people who carry out medical research and who produce medications for use in Cuba and for export to numerous countries that seek out these products.”
Since the start of the pandemic, Cuba has suffered 7,330 deaths, and has a mortality rate of 0.84%, lower than the global average of 2.05%, and much lower than the average in the Americas which stands at 2.46%.
