The U.S.A will begin administering coronavirus vaccine boosters next month. Beginning September 20, "all Americans" who received either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine will be offered a booster starting eight months after their second dose.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned wealthy countries for pursuing "narrow nationalistic goals when we live in an interconnected world and the virus is mutating quickly."
He explained, "The divide between the haves and have-nots will only grow larger if manufacturers and leaders prioritize booster shots over supply to low- and middle-income countries," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, without specifically mentioning the U.S. "In fact, strong national leadership would be to fully commit to vaccine equity and global solidarity, which would save lives and slow variants down."
Tedros added "Vaccine injustice is a shame on all humanity."
Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, argued Wednesday that rich nations administering booster shots is akin to "planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets and leaving other people to drown without a life jacket. That's the ethical reality."
Matthew Kavanagh, a professor of global health at Georgetown University, pointed out, " Imagining that a booster shot will protect us from a pandemic that continues to rage around the world is more theater than public health. Ending the pandemic is far better medicine than an individual booster."
Madhu Pai, a Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health at McGill University in Montreal, echoed that argument, tweeting, "The 'race to stop the Delta variant' cannot be won by giving repeated boosters to already vaccinated people in a few rich nations. The race will be won when all people in the world have access to vaccines."
1.3% of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose, meaning billions of people remain vulnerable to the highly contagious Delta variant and other mutations. Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions of the world are currently facing alarming surges in coronavirus cases and deaths as they struggle to obtain access to vaccines due to supply shortages.
Due to the massive global Covid-19 vaccine shortage, less than 4% of people on the African continent and just 30% of people across Asia have obtained at least one dose of a vaccine.
In an editorial, the authorative journal Nature endorsed the WHO's call for a temporary moratorium on booster shots, arguing that "the case for boosters has not yet been proved."
"In a period of vaccine scarcity, the choice to dole out boosters must be guided by evidence of benefit, and consideration given to the cost of delaying the delivery of vaccines to vulnerable people and health-care workers in other countries," the editorial reads. "So far, there is little evidence that boosters are needed to protect the fully vaccinated."
"If vaccines were not scarce, boosters would be less controversial," the editorial continued. "But to focus on boosters when more than half the world lacks vaccine doses is short-sighted and will only keep the pandemic burning longer. For wealthy countries, this strategy means they will be indefinitely chasing their tails in terms of new variants. And for the rest of the world, it means prolonging unnecessary suffering."
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