How great is Cuba! I exclaim, after learning that my country already has a vaccine candidate to fight COVID-19.

I get up from the chair in front of the computer and –I confess that between tears and happiness– I exclaim again: And what name have they given it!, In reference to Soberana, a title that will identify each bulb that comes out when all the tests have been done , from the Finlay Institute as rector of the project and other scientific centers created by Fidel, and that many years ago began to bear the necessary fruit, saving lives.

How is it possible? Anyone, inside or outside the besieged, blockaded island, attacked by a powerful empire that, unfortunately, just 90 miles away, has no reaction capacity to control the pandemic itself, which has left more than 5,500,000 infected and over 174,000 dead.

In the big house of that neighbor clinging to suffocate and subdue us, there are excellent scientists, large consortia that produce drugs, and there is a lot of money. But there health is also a commodity.

However, something is missing that is the fundamental cause, the concern of its Government, ethics, leadership, valuation of the human being above the market. What identifies us here is missing: solidarity with ourselves and with everyone, anywhere in the world.

That Cuba already has its vaccine candidate is great news for our people, those who know very well that, once all the essential evaluation processes have been completed, they will be injected to everyone, regardless of skin color, the profession that we have , the salary that we earn, the religion that we can practice. It will be free and available to all the people.

Cubans – and the world – also know that Cuba knows how to share what it has and that solidarity is the flag that identifies and defines us.

What I just read in a cable from the AFP agency will not happen here, in the dignified Cuba that resists and conquers: a Salvadoran family living in Miami Gardens, Florida state, after becoming infected with COVID-19, which is why Germán Amaya, 55, died, now faces a lack of money to pay the bulky hospital bill, averaging $ 73,000. 

It turns out that Amaya worked for the last 11 years at the luxurious Fontainebleau hotel in that city, but with the pandemic he lost his job, with it, his health insurance, and finally his life, the office says.

The Salvadoran left behind a devastated family, mourning his death as he faces unpayable health and funeral bills.

His wife, Glenda, took him to the hospital on July 15. He did not have any prior medical conditions, but was unable to breathe and did not have health insurance. That was the last time that Glenda saw her husband, who was hospitalized for 24 days, nine of them in a coma.

The family now experiences firsthand one of the most controversial issues in the country: the way health care works.

In the United States, medical service is linked to employment. It is a rich nation where being unemployed – something that has happened to millions of people during the pandemic – also means losing health insurance, says the aforementioned AFP cable.