The World Health Organization (WHO) once again requested, this Wednesday, September 8, 2021, that people vaccinated against Covid-19 do not receive a third dose. For the institution, it is urgent that the doses of vaccine be sent to poor countries which have only been able to immunize a tiny part of their population.
WHO calls for extension of moratorium
At the beginning of last August, the director general of the WHO, Dr Tedros, launched a moratorium on booster doses against Covid-19. Although several rich countries opposed it and still launched their vaccination booster campaign, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus demanded Wednesday, September 8, 2021, ” an extension of the moratorium at least until the end of 2021 So that poor countries, which have only been able to immunize a small part of their population, can receive their dose of vaccine. At a press conference, he said: “ At this time, we don’t want to see widespread use of booster doses for healthy people who are fully vaccinated. “.
Objective: to vaccinate 40% of the world’s population by the end of the year
To justify his remarks, Dr Tedros recalled during the press conference that “ WHO’s global goals remain to help each country immunize at least 10% of its population by the end of the month, at least 40% by the end of the year and 70% of the world’s population by the middle of next year However, the rich countries gave only 15% of the billion promised doses. Faced with this observation, he declared: “ I will not remain silent when the companies and countries that control the global vaccine supply think the world’s poor must be content with leftovers “.
In addition, the international vaccine solidarity device against Covid-19, Covax announced on Wednesday that it would be forced to revise its ambitions downwards for poor countries. While the system initially counted on 2 billion doses in 2021, the authority finally hopes to have a total of 1.425 billion doses in 2021.
Inequality of access and “boomerang return”
If the inequality of access to vaccines between rich and poor countries poses a problem from an ethical point of view for the WHO, it can also have consequences on the health plan. According to epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, it is important that a large proportion of the world’s inhabitants have received their first two doses of vaccine before offering a booster dose to people already vaccinated. And for good reason, if we let the virus spread in poorly vaccinated countries (especially poor countries), rich countries could be exposed to a ” particularly severe boomerang return if these exotic epidemics generate new variants that are more transmissible, more virulent and that elude existing vaccines “.
