health infrastructure, funding for medical supplies used during vaccination and staff.
Tedros has asked pharmaceutical companies to share their vaccines globally. Tedros has also called for a moratorium on booster shots in healthy people until the end of 2021.
Richer countries appear to be ignoring his plea. The United Kingdom announced on Tuesday that it will offer boosters to people over the age of 50, as well as younger, vulnerable individuals, joining Israel, France and Germany, who have already started booster efforts. An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will meet to consider the issue of boosters for Americans this week.
The move in some countries towards a rollout of boosters is happening even as new reports cast doubt on the need for third shots in healthy people. In fact, earlier this week two top officials from the FDA and senior WHO scientists helped write an opinion piece in The Lancet voicing opposition to boosters.
Coronavirus: Growing Concern in Africa Over New Variants
The question of boosters in Africa is an expensive one that would require $500 million to $600 million more “on the conservative side,” with logistics of $1 billion a year, Afreximbank President Benedict Oramah says.
The African Union’s envoy for COVID-19 vaccines, Strive Masiyiwa, says that export restrictions and intellectual property rights should be lifted to allow vaccine production within Africa. The WHO and partners prepared for this in June by launching a hub in South Africa that could make the vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
However, neither of the companies has agreed to share the vaccine recipes and they show no indication that they will do so, according to the AP.
“It’s not an unreasonable call, because our neighbors in the U.S. supported these companies to produce some of these vaccines,” Masiyiwa shares. “Now let this miracle be available to all mankind.”
If you are unable to get a vaccine at this time, it is important that you be safe and take the necessary precautions to protect yourself and others.