The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on countries to cancel Covid booster shots until at least the end of September in order to help ease the drastic inequity in dose distribution between rich and poor nations as well as help fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We cannot 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,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
The WHO said the moratorium would help towards the goal of vaccinating at least 10 percent of every country’s population by the end of September.
“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it,” Tedros added.
High-income countries administered around 50 doses for every 100 people in May, and that number has since doubled, according to WHO. Low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses for every 100 people, due to lack of supply.
“We need an urgent reversal from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries to the majority going to low-income countries,” Tedros said.
