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GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) – The World Health Organization stated on Monday that rich countries should not order booster doses for their immunized people while other countries have yet to acquire COVID-19 vaccines. According to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, mortality from the COVID-19 pandemic were rising again, the delta form was becoming prevalent, and many countries still lacked sufficient vaccine doses to safeguard their health workers. “The delta variation is ripping through the world at a blazing pace, creating a fresh rise in COVID-19 cases and death,” Tedros said at a press conference, saying that the highly contagious version, which was initially discovered in India, had now been discovered in over 104 nations. “The global COVID-19 vaccination supply gap is enormously unequal and inequitable.” Some countries and regions are ordering millions of booster doses before other countries have enough vaccine to vaccinate their health staff and most vulnerable citizens,” Tedros added. He singled out vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna as businesses who wanted to provide booster doses in places where immunization rates were already high. Tedros suggested that they instead donate their doses to COVAX, a vaccine-sharing initiative aimed primarily at low- and middle-income nations. Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, said the world health organization had yet to see proof that booster doses were required for patients who had completed a full course of immunizations. While boosters may be required in the future, there was no evidence that they were required at the time. “It has to be based on research and evidence, not on particular businesses stating that their vaccines require a booster dose,” she explained. “Right now, we are sentencing hundreds of millions of people to have no protection,” said Mike Ryan, chief of the WHO’s emergencies division. If countries expend scarce dosages on booster shots at a time when vulnerable people are still dying without vaccines overseas, “we will look back in wrath and shame,” Ryan said. “These are folks who want to have their cake and eat it, and then bake another cake and eat it as well,” he explained./nRead More

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