The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, warned today (22) that no country will come out of the covid-19 pandemic with booster doses of vaccines.
“No country can get out of the pandemic with booster shots,” he said.
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Tedros has repeatedly demonstrated against the administration of additional doses of vaccines against Covid-19 when part of the world’s population, the poorest, especially in Africa, still do not receive the immunizing agent.
According to the WHO leader, who spoke at a virtual press conference, the “indiscriminate booster programs” of vaccination “tend to prolong the pandemic, instead of ending it, diverting the available doses to countries that already have high vaccination rates, thus giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate”.
Tedros Adhanom’s warning comes when several countries move forward with boosting the vaccination against Covid-19 with a third dose. Israel decided to administer the fourth dose in people over 60 years and in healthcare professionals because of the micron variant of the new coronavirus, considered more contagious.
The Ethiopian doctor highlighted that the agreed doses of vaccines against Covid-19 (two doses) “remain effective” against variants of SARS-CoV-2, including Ômicron, and that “the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths are of people not vaccinated, and not from people who do not have booster doses.”
A week ago, Tedros Adhanom said there was “no evidence of the effectiveness of booster shots” against Ômicron, which is spreading rapidly at an unprecedented rate.
According to the WHO expert committee on vaccine policy, at least 126 countries have given instructions for giving a booster dose or for a supplemental vaccination (eg for children), of which 120 have already started inoculation campaigns. with this purpose. Most of these countries are rich.
Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and which has spread around the world.
*Brazil Agency
