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Against the Odds, Cuba Could Become a Coronavirus Vaccine Powerhouse

By Anthony Faiola and Ana Vanessa Herrero

“It undermines the message that Cuba is a broadly authoritarian country," said AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth to The Washington Post.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro vowed to build a biotech juggernaut in the Caribbean, advancing the idea in the early 1980s with six researchers in a tiny Havana lab.

Forty years later, the communist island nation could be on the cusp of a singular breakthrough: Becoming the world’s smallest country to develop not just one, but multiple coronavirus vaccines…

“In the public eye, it would soften the image of a country that’s being accused of doing some pretty bad things,” said Eric Farnsworth, a critic of the Cuban government and vice president of the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society. “It undermines the message that Cuba is a broadly authoritarian country that can’t produce anything good.”…

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