Cuba’s drug regulatory authority has approved a second Covid-19 vaccine candidate for late-stage clinical trials as the country races to secure a homegrown shot to quell its worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic and sell abroad, Reuters reports.

The Cuban regulatory authority gave the green light for late-phase trials for Abdala which targets the spike protein of the novel coronavirus.

Authorities will start recruiting about 48,000 volunteers between the ages of 19 and 80 in Cuba’s eastern provinces for a randomised, placebo-controlled trial of the three-shot vaccine next week, according to Cuba’s official registry of clinical trials.