Boosters aren’t useful in countries with large vaccine supplies but where up to 50 per cent of people have not gotten vaccinated, whether out of concern for secondary effects or other reasons, WHO’s chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said, addressing a medbrief in Geneva yesterday she further earmarked “Wholesale boosting is not the solution right now.”
“The data from country after country after country is showing that the people who are in the ICUs, the people who are severely ill, and the people who are dying are the unvaccinated. I think the message is loud and clear that it’s a primary course of vaccination that is going to protect against severe disease and death — that has to be our goal,” she said.
“At this point, the benefits that we will get from reaching those people who have not received primary courses of vaccination are going to be higher than giving additional doses to those who have already completed a primary course,” Swaminathan said.
The WHO had hoped to vaccinate priority populations – the elderly, people with weaker immune systems and health care workers – in all countries by the end of this year. But rich countries with big vaccine stockpiles have monopolized most doses.
The World Health Organization experts said that early evidence suggests the omicron variant may be spreading faster than the highly transmissible delta variant but brings with it less severe corona virus disease ,though it’s too early to make firm conclusions.
