GENEVA, July 12 – Rich countries should not be ordering booster shots for their vaccinated populations while other countries have yet to receive Covid-19 vaccines, the World Health Organisation said on Monday (July 12).
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said deaths were again rising from the Covid-19 pandemic, the Delta variant was becoming dominant, and many countries had yet to receive enough vaccine doses to protect their health workers.
“The Delta variant is ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving a new spike in Covid-19 cases and death,” Tedros told a briefing, noting that the highly contagious variant, first detected in India, had now been found in more than 104 countries.
“The global gap in Covid-19 vaccine supply is hugely uneven and inequitable. Some countries and regions are actually ordering millions of booster doses, before other countries have had supplies to vaccinate their health workers and most vulnerable,” said Tedros.
He singled out vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna as companies that were aiming to provide booster shots in countries where there were already high levels of vaccination.
Tedros said they should instead direct their doses to COVAX, the vaccine sharing programme mainly for middle-income and poorer countries.
Anger, shame
WHO’s Scientist Says Boosters Aren’t Yet a Must – Too Bad, Some Folks Still Wanna
Surprise! The WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, just dropped a truth bomb: from the data so far, we don’t actually need booster shots for those who’ve already finished their full vaccination course.
What Did She Say?
- “There’s no hard evidence boosting everything.”
- “The decision should rely on facts, not on companies pushing ads about their own shots.”
Mike Ryan’s Sharp Take
Mike Ryan, the head of WHO’s emergencies programme, warned that diverting doses to boosters is like a cruel joke when other vulnerable folks are still dying.
- “If you let countries use precious doses on boosters while people in other nations still lack vaccines, we’ll look back in anger and shame.”
- “Everybody wants their cake, eats it, then wants to bake another cake – that’s just not fair.”
Bottom line: while there might one day be a scientific flip‑flop on boosters, right now the evidence says it’s unnecessary. Save those shots for the folks who still need them.
