(HealthDay News) — Wealthy nations should not be giving COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to their citizens while poor nations struggle to get first doses of vaccines, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
The U.N. health organization called for a moratorium on booster shots until at least the end of September, even for the elderly, healthcare workers, and other high-risk groups.
“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the delta variant,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing. “But we cannot — and we should not — accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected.”
Of more than 4 billion vaccine doses that have been given around the world, more than 80% have been used in high- and upper-middle-income countries, which account for less than half of the world’s population, Tedros said. High-income countries have administered almost 100 doses for every 100 people, he said, whereas low-income countries have administered just 1.5 doses for every 100 people, mainly because of a lack of supply.
“We need an urgent reversal, from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries, to the majority going to low-income countries,” he added.
Further, Tedros asked the health ministers of the G-20 countries, who are meeting soon ahead of a planned summit in October, to make “concrete commitments” to reach global vaccination targets. The WHO would like to see 10% vaccination coverage reached in every country within the next two months.
