Will the rich countries listen?

Global health experts are asking rich countries to fulfill their responsibility towards the rest of humanity rather than stocking up vaccine doses as boosters. More people around the world can die due to Covid if the affluent countries do not share vaccine doses with developing countries, they warned.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard and Seth Berkley, the chief executive of vaccine alliance GAVI, said vulnerable people in poor countries have not been administered even the first dose of the Covid vaccine, which could have serious consequences.

“Large-scale boosting in one rich country would send a signal around the world that boosters are needed everywhere. This will suck many vaccine doses out of the system, and many more people will die because they never even had a chance to get a single dose,” they warned. “If millions are boosted in the absence of a strong scientific case, history will remember the moment at which political leaders decided to reject their responsibility to the rest of humanity in the greatest crisis of our lifetimes.”

The World Health Organization earlier asked governments to make sure the third shot is started only after other countries, especially in the Third World, are able to procure enough doses to vaccinate the majority of the population at least with one dose.

Israel in July started offering Covid-19 booster shots among seniors in response to a raging Delta variant. Last month, it started giving Covid booster shots to all citizens, including children as young as 12. Israeli health officials said they decided to give booster shots because the effectiveness of the second dose of the Pfizer-biontech vaccine waned six months after administration.

From the Associated Press: “The UK announced on September 14 it will offer a third dose of coronavirus vaccine to everyone over 50 and other vulnerable people to help the country ride out the pandemic through the winter months. The booster shots, which will be rolled out beginning next week, were approved a day after the Conservative government also backed plans to offer one vaccine dose to children 12 to 15 years old. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, which advises the government, recommended that booster shots be offered to everyone over 50, health-care workers, people with underlying health conditions and those who live with people whose immune systems are compromised. They will be given no earlier than six months after a person received their second dose of vaccine.”

An international group of scientists—including two top US regulators— wrote on Monday in a scientific journal that the average person does not need a Covid-19 booster yet. After reviewing studies of the vaccines’ performance, the scientists said the shots are working well, especially against severe disease, despite the contagious Delta variant. “Even in populations with fairly high vaccination rates, the unvaccinated are still the major drivers of transmission” at this stage of the pandemic, they said.

Their observation, published in The Lancet, illustrates the intense scientific debate about who needs booster doses and when. The authors include two leading vaccine reviewers at the Food and Drug Administration, Drs. Phil Krause and Marion Gruber. Among the other 16 authors are leading vaccine researchers in the US, Britain, France, South Africa and India, plus scientists with the World Health Organization, which already has urged a moratorium on boosters until poor countries are better vaccinated.

Studies show that protection against Covid-19, measured by the level of antibodies generated by people who are vaccinated, wanes after about six months. But that doesn’t mean those people are dramatically more vulnerable to disease, the authors said. “Reductions in neutralizing antibody titer do not necessarily predict reductions in vaccine efficacy over time, and reductions in vaccine efficacy against mild disease do not necessarily predict reductions in the [typically higher] efficacy against severe disease.” Even against the more transmissible variants, including Delta, current vaccines continue to protect people from getting severe Covid-19, the scientists concluded.