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 today.
“The Delta variant is ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving a new spike in Covid-19 cases and death,” Tedros said, noting that the highly contagious variant, first detected in India, had now been found in more than 104 countries. 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.
“It has to be based on the science and the data, not on individual companies declaring that their vaccines need to be administered as a booster dose,” she said.