COVID vaccine booster doses can't be ticket to go ahead with planned celebrations: WHO chief

Blanket booster programmes of COVID-19 vaccines are likely to prolong the pandemic, rather than ending it by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate, said the World Health Organisation's chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"No country can boost its way out of the pandemic and boosters cannot be seen as a ticket to go ahead with planned celebrations, without the need for other precautions," said Dr Tedros during a media briefing here on Wednesday.

"About 20 per cent of all vaccine doses administered every day are currently being given as boosters or additional doses," he added.

Tedros also laid emphasis upon the vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths are reported among unvaccinated people, not un-boosted people.

"And we must be very clear that the vaccines we have to remain effective against both the Delta and Omicron variants," he added.

Emphasising that the global priority must be to support all countries to reach the 40 per cent vaccination target as quickly as possible, Tedros said that by the middle of this year countries must vaccinate 70 per cent of their population.

"Even as we work to make the best use of the [#COVID19] vaccines we have, WHO is also working to identify the next generation of vaccines through the Solidarity Trial Vaccines," Tedros added.

He also said that blanket booster programmes are likely to prolong the pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate

Further, Tedros informed that WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, or SAGE concluded their primary review on booster doses and said that that the focus of immunization must remain on decreasing death and severe disease, and expressed concern that blanket booster programmes will exacerbate vaccine inequity.

( With inputs from ANI )

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