 One of the major revelations of the COVID-19 era has been the success of Cuba, despite being under a blockade for decades. Cuba was quickly able to rise to the challenge and send teams of doctors to many countries across the world. It has also had a remarkably successful vaccine program, developing a number of indigenously made vaccines. It also has a very high vaccination rate. For the application of strict measures in community participation, Cuba has also succeeded in controlling the spread of the disease. From November 15-25, 35 Italian volunteers participated in the clinical trial for the Soberana vaccine in Havana. Mauricio Capola, who was part of the trial, talks about what he learned about the Cuban vaccine development and his own experiences during the trial. So could you maybe first tell us some of the factors which has made Cuba's immunization process and the development of vaccines unique as far as the world is concerned? Yes, there are above all two factors we have to highlight. The first one is a conjunctural element that Cuba was able to develop cooperation and another market-oriented competition to develop and produce the vaccine. There are different research institutes working on vaccines, and in January 2021, the new infections per month were around 15,000, and in only six months in August 2021, the number increased to almost 270,000 new infections in one month. The state plan decided in this moment to invest all the energy in the production of a new vaccine, and it was like this kind of cooperation of all institutions together that produced new vaccines. Today in Cuba, we have three authorized vaccines and two vaccine candidates. So it is an immense sign and an immense symbolic struteness to see how Cuba was able with a state plan, but also a cooperation of different institutions. It's not like we think in socialism everything is under control of the state and there is no competition and so on. No, there are different institutions working on vaccines, but they work together. They do not work to make profits. They work together to immunize the population. And this is what the general director of the Finlay Institute, the Finlay Institute, it's the Institute for Vaccines, which produced the Soberana 02 and Soberana plus and Soberana 01 vaccine. He said, Vicente Vérez Bencomo, he said, do you know the difference between Soberana and Pfizer? Pfizer developed a commodity to sell to the governments and make profits. The collateral effect was that the populations were partially protected from the virus, but in Cuba, we developed a vaccine to protect our people and we are succeeding. If the will to able to earn some money from our work, obviously the people will be happy and they will invest it in no other research and public research for vaccines and for health care system. But of course, there was only different measures they took. For example, the total lockdown, the lockdown, the country just reopened on November 15, but also very strong measures concerning masks that all Cuban people are wearing masks also outside. This is something in the Western world you do not see and this is something that really you see that the population is bringing all these decisions, all the measures. They are living these measures. It's not something imposed by the government and they are just following what the government is saying, but they are really all very sensitive and confident on the government. But there is also like this conjunctural thing is linked to historical developments because 25 to 30 years ago, in the middle of what is called the periodo especial, the special period Cuba was living due to deep economic crisis. Fidel Castro had a far sadness and invested in the pure technological research. Why was it like this? Cuba was alone due to this economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the United States and after the fall of the Soviet Union. So if the Cuban government wanted to guarantee high education and high health care for everyone, what was needed is to invest more in research, especially in biotechnology. And that happened. That happened today. Cuba has several research institutes, as I said, working on vaccines. Cuba was able to develop their own vaccines for against different diseases and they eradicate also diseases thanks to them. So concerning the COVID-19 vaccine, as I said, the Soberana vaccine was produced by the Finlay vaccine Institute and the Abdala, the second vaccine existing in Cuba was developed by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. So as researchers were saying in Cuba, the Cuban vaccine and its vaccination campaign are not the result of any miracle, but the consequences of years of right political decisions. Could you also maybe tell us about some of your experiences as part of the collaboration that took place between the Italian institutes and the Cuban institutes? How did this collaboration begin and what were you experiencing? Yes, the clinical trial I participated in November and December is called Soberana plus Turin. Why is it called like this? Because it's a collaboration between the Finlay vaccine Institute in Nihabana and the Amadeo de Savoia Hospital in Turin. This collaboration was the result of deep solidarity among people, solidarity with Cuba and so we traveled to Cuba on November 15 to get Soberana vaccine as a booster vaccine for 35 Italian people traveling there. And we finished the clinical observation, the clinical trial on December 15 when the last controls were made in the hospital of Turin. So we had like two moments of this clinical trial, the first one in Cuba with all the researchers and all the tests were made, then we got the vaccine, we traveled back to Italy and now we got the last controls by the doctors and so on. And in the beginning of January, mid-January, we are expecting the results of this clinical trial. What we have to underline is like the way we were accompanied by the Cuban doctors during the 10 days we were in Cuba. It was incredible. Every day they took our blood, they controlled our health situation, they talked to us. It was really, we were not just like a vector of a disease, but we were a person, we were integral and a complete person and every element of our body and of our mind was took in consideration in the discussion with the doctor. Then we said, okay, it's normal, we are like 35 people coming from Italy, so it is normal that they pay all this attention to us every day during this clinical trial. So we asked the doctors, how is it organized in Cuba? And they said it's the same thing because we have a very, very well-developed structure of family doctors in the neighborhoods and in all the cities and all the territories of Cuba, also in less populated territories. And this family doctor is a contact point, is a relation point for the people. So it is clear that everyone is a campaign during the vaccination campaign like this. And it was confirmed when we went to a vaccination point hub for children because we have to underline that the Sobarana vaccine is not only for adult people, but also for children. And Cuba has 97% of the pediatric population already vaccineed with three vaccines, with three doses. Today in Italy, we are speaking about 0.42 children from two to 18 vaccinated. That's a very low rate. And above all, all the numbers are showing that schools are becoming the first place where the virus is spread. So at the same moment, we have Pfizer and BioNTech telling us that the tests they made shows that they cannot guarantee high immunization for children between two and five. So today Cuba is the only country with a vaccine that can be used for the pediatric population from two to five. But why do we not talk about it? Why do the media not talk about it? It's incredible how Cuba is just marginalized by the medias. Of course, it's a war against Cuba. It's a war against this system that is guaranteeing protection for all the people with a potential also to expand to other countries. There are some institutes all over the world working with Cuba, but they are all countries marginalized by blockades, by US imperialism, and that's the reason why we have to struggle and to fight for the recognition for the health care and the research, biotechnological research system of Cuba because it's an example also for us. And that's not an ideological question. It's not to be for socialism or for capitalism. It's something very concrete because today we are still dying because of coronavirus and Cuba was able to eliminate dying people in Cuba. There is no people dying anymore because of the virus or only few, like one every week. In Italy, we have 150 people dying again. It's the same number like in six months ago, the virus is spreading. So we have to take into account Cuba as an example and as an international cooperation point to struggle against and to fight against the coronavirus globally and not only in one country, not only in Western countries, but globally. Because I remember the countries from the global south have a vaccination rate of 2.8 percent. It's nothing if you cannot combat struggle and fight against the virus in the global south. There will be never an easy situation also in the global north, in the Western countries. That's the reason why we have to take in consideration Cuba as an international cooperation country to fight against the coronavirus.