The director of the WHO calls the distribution of reinforcements a ‘scandal’ while the poorest countries wait for doses.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) called the distribution of the COVID-19 booster vaccines a “scandal that must stop now” on Friday as poorer countries continue to wait for initial doses.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticized countries with the “highest vaccine coverage” at a WHO briefing for collecting additional doses of vaccines and prioritizing giving their citizens a third and fourth dose over-vaccinating at-risk populations in other nations.
“This is a scandal that must end now,” he said.
In fact, he cited data that six times more booster doses are given globally than initial doses in low-income countries.
“It makes no sense to give boosters to healthy adults or to vaccinate children, when health workers, the elderly, and other high-risk groups around the world are still waiting for their first dose,” he added, noting that immunosuppressed people are an exception.
Tedros also noted that countries need other precautions against coronavirus in addition to vaccines, saying: “No country can just vaccinate to get out of the pandemic.”
The WHO has consistently rejected the need for booster injections as countries like the US have gone ahead and opened the third and fourth doses to a growing number of people.
In the US, certain mRNA vaccine recipients and all Johnson & Johnson recipients have been approved to receive boosters at least six months and at least two months after their most recent vaccination, respectively.
Children ages 5 to 11 also became eligible for the Pfizer vaccine earlier this month, and the Biden administration has said the US has enough doses to get all 28 million of that age group vaccinated.
Meanwhile, other countries are struggling to get high-risk populations to receive their first vaccines. To reach the WHO target of vaccinating 40 percent of the population of all countries by the end of 2021, the world needs another 550 million doses, Tedros said.
Progress has been made through the COVAX program, co-led by Gavi, WHO and the Coalition for Innovation in Epidemic Preparedness, which has shipped nearly 500 million doses to 144 countries and territories.
As of Thursday, at least 40 percent of the world’s overall population considered themselves fully vaccinated, but that number includes just 2.4 percent in low-income countries. according to the A bell.
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Bahrain MORE announced Wednesday that the United States is working with COVAX to ship Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccines to those living in conflict zones. The United States has committed more than 1 billion doses as donations.
But at the same time, pressure is mounting on the administration to approve booster injections for the remaining American adult population, as breakthrough cases have become more prevalent amid the highly transmissible delta variant.
Still, studies have repeatedly shown that the risk of hospitalization and death is much lower among those who received the initial vaccine than among those not vaccinated. Recent research suggests that reinforcements further increase this protection.