The WHO calls for a moratorium on coronavirus vaccine booster doses until the end of September to enable at least 10% of the population of every country to be vaccinated.
The World Health Organization (WHO) requires a pause on coronavirus vaccine boosters until September end to enable a minimum of ten percent of every country globally to receive the vaccination. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, said at the press briefing that he realizes the concern of all worldwide governments to protect their people from the COVID-19 delta variant. However, agency officials can’t accept nations that already used most of the international supply of vaccines using even more of it.
WHO calls for moratorium on COVID vaccine booster jabs WHO chief says the move would enable at least 10 percent of the population of every country to be vaccinated.
Tedros added that G-20 countries had a notable management role as those nations were the largest producers, the largest donors, and the largest consumers of coronavirus vaccines. In addition, the request of the WHO comes at a time of the spread of the more contagious Delta variant provokes discussions about boosters in rich countries such as the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, even as a new wave of coronavirus causes chaos in nations that have been incapable of giving their nationals even a single dose.
Is the U.S. has had Sufficient Vaccine Supply to Distribute Abroad?
On Wednesday, the United States rejected the United Nations health agency’s call for a delay saying it was a wrong choice and that it was likely to do both. Jen Psaki, the press secretary of White House, noted that the United States donated over one hundred and ten million vaccine doses across the world. She said that they have enough supply of vaccines to ensure that all people globally have access to a vaccine. Moreover, the U.S. will have enough supply to ensure, if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decides to recommend vaccine boosters for some part of the population, to provide those as well.
On Wednesday, the press secretary told reporters that they definitely feel it is a wrong choice and can do both. Further, he added that the U.S. had enough supply of vaccine to continue distributing abroad while also ensuring that every American national receive full vaccination. For example, Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, received a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine last week, initiating a campaign to give booster shots to people ages more than sixty.
The WHO Requires a Pause on Vaccine Booster Shots Source: Web
Likewise, Germany plans to start booster shots next month. However, the Director of the WHO’s Department of Vaccines, Immunization and Biologicals, Katherine O’Brien, told reporters that they need to focus on those individuals who are most weak against the virus, most at risk of severe infection and death, to get their initial and second doses.
Inequity of Vaccine
The World Health Organization continually called for the wealthiest countries to help improve access to COVID-19 vaccines in the developing countries because of the gap in worldwide vaccine distribution. Around 1.8% of African people received full vaccination, compared with approximately fifty percent in both the United States and European Union, according to the statistics of Our World in Data (OWID).
Around 101 doses per hundred people were injected in the arms in nations categorized as high income by the World Bank, with the hundred-doses mark exceeded this week. However, that number drops to about 1.7 doses per hundred people in the twenty-nine lowest-income nations. The United Nations health agency argues that nobody is safe until everybody is safe because the longer and more broadly the coronavirus circulates, the bigger the chance that new variants of the virus could emerge – and extend an international crisis in combating the outbreak.
Unequal distribution of the vaccine was at the central point of the debate for some months at the World Trade Organization (WTO) as developing nations call for the provisional removal of intellectual property rights on vaccines to boost international manufacturing capacity. Furthermore, the World Health Organization has no power to require governments to follow up its suggestions. As a result, several in the past overlooked its requests on issues such as limiting cross-border travel, donating COVID-19 vaccines, and taking actions to boost vaccine production in developing nations.
