The World Health Organization is calling for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September.
The move is to enable that at least 10% of the population of every country was vaccinated, WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it,” Mr Tedros added.
The call to stop COVID-19 vaccine boosters is the strongest yet from the UN agency as the gap between inoculation rates in wealthy and poor countries widens.
High-income countries administered around 50 doses for every 100 people in May, and that number had since doubled, according to WHO.
Low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses for every 100 people, due to lack of supply.
“We need an urgent reversal, from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries, to the majority going to low-income countries,” said Mr Tedros.
Last week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog received a third shot of coronavirus vaccine, kicking off a campaign to give booster doses to people aged over 60 as part of efforts to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant in the country.
The United States in July signed a deal with Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech to buy 200 million additional doses of their Covid-19 vaccines to help with pediatric vaccination as well as possible booster shots.
“We need instead to focus on those people who are most vulnerable, most at risk of severe disease and death, to get their first and second doses,” said Katherine O’Brien, director, immunisation vaccines and biologicals at the WHO.
A Reuters global case count shows there have been more than 200 million people have been infected with Covid-19.
Global case count surpasses 200 million – Reuters
The Reuters tally shows that cases are rising in at least 83 out of…