WHO director general calls for moratorium on vaccine boosters
As countries around the world attempt to vaccinate their populations against COVID-19, the World Health Organisation has called for a moratorium on supplementary “booster” shots, citing global inequalities in access to the jabs.
.@WHO director general @DrTedros is calling for a moratorium on booster shoots in wealthy countries until the end of Sept, to get more vaccine to low income countries.
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) August 4, 2021
The statement came hours after a San Francisco hospital began offering “supplemental doses” of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Additionally, countries including Israel have already begun offering booster Pfizer doses to elderly people, while Germany and France are planning to administer booster doses to those who were vaccinated early on in the rollout, as well as elderly people and those with compromised immune systems.
According to The Washington Post, the UK is prepared to administer booster shots from September, pending approval from national health experts.
Currently, about 29 percent of the world’s population has received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
However, this number drops to just one percent in low-income countries, according to Our World in Data.
“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant,” WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhannom Ghebryesus said on Wednesday. “But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it.”
The price of vaccine inequity is the unnecessary loss of human lives - someone's parent, child, partner or friend. We have the tools and the means to deliver them to the people whose lives could still be saved. Let's use them NOW. #VaccinEquity
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) August 10, 2021
An analysis conducted by the organisation has found that if the 11 countries rolling out or considering rolling out booster shots were to give a third dose to everyone over the age of 50, they would use roughly 440 million doses from the global supply.
“We need an urgent reversal, from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries, to the majority going to low-income countries,” Tedros said.