GENEVA — The World Health Organization condemned Wednesday the rush by
wealthy countries to provide COVID vaccine
booster shots, while millions around
the world have yet to receive a single dose.
اضافة اعلان
Speaking before US authorities announced that all vaccinated Americans would
soon be eligible to receive additional doses, WHO experts insisted there was
not enough scientific evidence that boosters were needed and said providing
them while so many were still waiting to be immunized was immoral.
"We're planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already
have life jackets, while we're leaving other people to drown without a single
life jacket,"
WHO's emergency director Mike Ryan told reporters from the
UN agency's Geneva headquarters.
"The fundamental, ethical reality is we're handing out second life
jackets while leaving millions and millions of people without anything to
protect them."
WHO called earlier this month for a moratorium on COVID vaccine booster
shots to help ease the drastic inequity in dose distribution between rich and
poor nations.
But that has not stopped a number of countries from moving forward with
plans to add a third jab, as they struggle to thwart the Delta variant.
US authorities warned Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccination efficacy was
decreasing over time, and said they had authorized booster shots for all
Americans from September 20 starting eight months after an individual has been
fully vaccinated.
The officials said that while the vaccines remain "remarkably
effective" in reducing the risk of severe disease, hospitalization, and
death from the effects of COVID, protection could diminish in the months ahead
without boosted immunization.
Washington had already authorized an extra dose for people with weakened
immune systems.
'Shame on all humanity'
But WHO experts insisted that the science was still out on boosters and
stressed that ensuring that people in low-income countries where vaccination is
lagging received jabs was far more important.
"What is clear is that it’s critical to get first shots into arms and
protect the most vulnerable before boosters are rolled out," WHO chief
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Wednesday's press conference.
"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," he said.
"The virus is evolving and it is not in the best interests of leaders
just to focus on narrow nationalistic goals when we live in an interconnected
world and the virus is mutating quickly."
Tedros voiced outrage at reports that the single-dose J&J vaccine
currently being filled and finished in South Africa was being shipped for use
in Europe "where virtually all adults have been offered vaccines at this
point".
"We urge J&J to urgently prioritize distribution of their vaccines
to Africa before considering supplies to rich countries that already have
sufficient access," he said.
"Vaccine injustice is a shame on all humanity and if we don’t tackle it
together, we will prolong the acute stage of this pandemic for years when it
could be over in a matter of months."
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