WHO chief calls booster vaccinations for healthy people a ‘scandal’

Despite the huge rise in the number of coronavirus infections in Europe, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has condemned the booster vaccinations of healthy people who have been vaccinated. “Every day around the world, booster vaccines are given six times more than the first doses of vaccination in low-income countries. This is a scandal that must stop now,” Tedros said in Geneva on Friday.

The head of the World Health Organization complained that boosting or vaccinating children would be useless as long as health workers, especially vulnerable people in poor countries, were still waiting for their first dose.

Adequate protective measures

People can be protected with preventive measures in place, including testing, mask-wearing, staying distancing, good ventilation, and avoiding crowds of people in confined spaces. “With the right mix, countries can keep Covid-19 transmission low and keep their societies and economies open,” Tedros said. “No country can simply vaccinate its way out of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

According to the World Health Organization, 550 million doses are still missing with the goal of vaccinating 40 percent of the population in every country in the world by the end of the year. This is how much is produced in ten days. The World Health Organization has again appealed to countries with large quantities of vaccines to abandon deliveries in favor of the UNO Covax programme, which supplies mainly poor countries. The Austrian federal government announced on Wednesday that it has ceded one million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Covax. In addition, the Cabinet decided to donate another 1.5 million cans of Astrazeneca and Biontech/Pfizer to countries in need.