GENEVA: The planet Health Organisation called on Wednesday for countries to avoid giving out extra Covid jabs until year-end, pointing to the millions worldwide who have yet to receive one dose.
“I won’t stay silent when the businesses and countries that control the worldwide supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists. Speaking from WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, Tedros urged wealthy countries and vaccine makers to prioritize getting the primary jabs to doctors and vulnerable populations in poorer nations over boosters.
“We don’t want to ascertain widespread use of boosters for healthy people that are fully vaccinated,” he said. The WHO called last month for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine booster shots until the top of September to deal with the drastic inequity in dose distribution between rich and poor nations.
But Tedros acknowledged on Wednesday that there had “been little change within the global situations since then.
“So today I’m calling for an extension of the moratorium until a minimum of the top of the year,” he said.
