WHO official: Booster shots ‘a mockery of vaccine equity’
NAIROBI, Kenya — The Africa director at the World Health Organization, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, criticized the decisions by some wealthy nations to start administering coronavirus booster shots, saying the decisions “make a mockery of vaccine equity” when the African continent is still struggling to get vaccine supplies.
African countries continue to lag far behind other continents in inoculations, with only 2 percent of the continent’s 1.3 billion people fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Although vaccine shipments have accelerated in recent weeks, African nations still aren’t getting nearly enough to meet their needs, Moeti said.
Instead of offering additional doses to their already fully vaccinated citizens, she said, rich countries should give priority to poor nations, some of which are being ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Moves by some countries globally to introduce booster shots threaten the promise of a brighter tomorrow for Africa,” Moeti said in an online news conference Thursday. “As some richer countries hoard vaccines, they make a mockery of vaccine equity.”
The WHO has called for a moratorium on booster shots until the end of September to free up vaccine supplies for lowincome nations. But several wealthy nations have said they wouldn’t wait that long.
In the United States, the Biden administration said Wednesday that it would provide booster shots to most Americans beginning as soon as Sept. 20. France and Germany also said they plan to offer shots to vulnerable populations, and Israel already has given third shots to more than 1 million residents.
President Joe Biden said in a television interview Thursday that he and his wife, Jill, plan to get booster shots themselves, assuming federal regulators give the go-ahead.
Biden defended offering Americans an additional shot when many countries were struggling to deliver initial doses to their populations.
“We’re providing more to the rest of the world than all the rest
of the world combined,” Biden told ABC. “We’re keeping our part of the bargain.”
Africa has reported more than 7.3 million cases and 184,000 deaths from the coronavirus, according to the WHO. The virus is surging in about two dozen African nations, pushing many governments to impose lockdowns, extend overnight curfews, close schools and limit public gatherings.
Health experts say the more contagious delta variant, first detected in India, is responsible for most of the current spread on the continent.
“While it took eight months for alpha to spread to 30 countries, delta has done so in half that time — only four months,” Moeti said.
Several African countries also are dealing with outbreaks of other diseases. This week, Ivory Coast confirmed its first Ebola case in almost 30 years. Guinea reported a case of the Marburg virus, the first ever found in West Africa. Uganda, which just emerged from a 42-day coronavirus lockdown, announced a polio outbreak.
Moeti urged wealthy nations to “rethink the idea of boosters” because of the danger that more dangerous variants will arise as the virus spreads in unvaccinated populations.
“Failure to vaccinate the most at-risk groups in all countries will result in needless deaths,” she said. “We say this every week, and it cannot be repeated enough.”