WHO Urges “Moratorium” On Covid Vaccine Booster Shots Till End Of Year

Geneva: the planet Health Organization called Wednesday for countries to avoid giving out extra Covid jabs until year-end, pointing to the millions worldwide who have yet to receive one dose.
“I won’t stay silent when the businesses and countries that control the worldwide supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.

Speaking from WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, Tedros urged wealthy countries and vaccine makers to prioritise getting the primary jabs to doctors and vulnerable populations in poorer nations over boosters.

“We don’t want to ascertain widespread use of boosters for healthy people that are fully vaccinated,” he said.

The WHO called last month for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine booster shots until the top of September to deal with the drastic inequity in dose distribution between rich and poor nations.

But Tedros acknowledged Wednesday that there had “been little change within the global situations since then.

“So today i’m calling for an extension of the moratorium until a minimum of the top of the year,” he said.

High-income countries had promised to donate quite one billion vaccine doses to poorer countries, he said — “but but 15 percent of these doses have materialised.

“We don’t need any longer promises,” he said. “We just want the vaccines.”

“Appalled”

Despite the decision for a moratorium, some countries are asserting booster jabs not just for vulnerable people but also for the broader population, citing signs of waning vaccine effectiveness against the highly transmissive Delta variant.

The WHO has acknowledged that a further dose might be needed for immunocompromised people, but stresses that for healthy people, the vaccines still seem very effective, especially in preventing severe disease.

“There isn’t a compelling case to maneuver forward with a generalised recommendation for booster doses,” Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s vaccines chief, told Wednesday’s press conference .

The UN health agency has set a worldwide target of seeing every country vaccinate a minimum of 10 percent of its population by the top of this month, and a minimum of 40 percent by the top of this year.

It wants to ascertain a minimum of 70 percent of the world’s population vaccinated by the center of next year.

But Tedros lamented that while 90 percent of made countries have hit the 10-percent mark, and quite 70 percent have already reached 40-percent, “not one low-income country has reached either target”.

He expressed outrage at a press release by a pharmaceutical industry organisation that the world’s seven wealthiest nations, referred to as the G7, now had enough vaccines for all adults and teenagers — and to supply boosters to at-risk groups — then the main target should shift to dose sharing.

“When I read this, i used to be appalled,” he said.

“In reality, manufacturers and high-income countries have long had the capacity to not only vaccinate their own priority groups, but to simultaneously support the vaccination of these same groups altogether countries.”