The World Health Organization has called for a moratorium on booster shots against covid-19 until the end of Spetember, director general Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
“WHO is calling for a moratorium on boosters until the end of September to enable at least 10 per cent of the population of every country to be vaccinated. To make that happen, we need everyone’s cooperation, especially the handful of countries and companies that control the global supply of vaccines,” the WHO director said.
“Even while hundreds of millions of people are still waiting for their first dose, some rich countries are moving towards booster doses,” added Tedros. “So far more than 4 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally. More than 80% have gone to high and upper middle income countries, even though they account for less than half of the world’s population, ” he further said.
His remaks came amid many rich countries started giving booster shots in addition to two dose of vaccines that have been proved sufficient to provide protection against deadly coronavirus, while poor nations struggle to have their citizens incoulated amid the Delta variant concern.
“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.” he said.
“We need an urgent reversal from the majority of vaccines going to high income countries to the majority going to low income countries,” Tedros ha earlier said, calling for countries to focus on global vaccination.
