France is thinking about it for the start of the school year: who will benefit first from the 3rd dose?
A rich country reflection for the World Health Organization (WHO).
Its director called on Wednesday for a moratorium on booster doses of anti-Covid vaccines to be able to make these doses available to countries which have only been able to immunize a tiny part of their population.
"We urgently need to turn things around: from a majority of vaccines going to rich countries to a majority going to poor countries," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that the moratorium should last "at least until the end of September ”, during a WHO press briefing in Geneva.
The boss of the UN agency has denounced for months the vaccine inequality which means that 1.5 people out of 100 in poor countries have received a dose of vaccine against 100 out of 100 in rich countries.
He was reacting to the fact that Germany and Israel announced campaigns for a third dose (for vaccines that require two initial doses) or "dose booster".
"Vaccinate 10% of the population"
In May, Dr Tedros launched a challenge: to vaccinate 10% of the population in all countries of the world by September.
"To get there, we need the cooperation of everyone, especially the handful of countries and companies that control global vaccine production," he said.
He called on pharmaceutical groups in particular to promote the Covax system, an international system set up to try to fight against vaccine inequality and in particular to help 92 poor countries to immunize their populations.
To read also Vaccines and poor countries: investigation of Covax and the dream "a little naive" of the WHO
For the time being, Covax is unable to fulfill its mission for lack of doses and has only been able to distribute a small fraction of what was initially planned. Of the four billion such doses injected around the world, 80% went to high- and middle-income countries, while they represent less than 50% of the world's population. Dr Bruce Aylward, in charge of Covax at the WHO, acknowledged that the end of September was an ambitious goal which may not be achieved.
