Covid-19: for the WHO, a third dose of vaccine is not necessary for the moment

Published on : 08/18/2021 – 19:46

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended, Wednesday, August 18, to achieve full vaccination coverage in areas with low vaccination rates before launching booster campaigns in countries where the majority of the population is already vaccinated. .

“We clearly believe that current data does not indicate that boosters are necessary,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a press conference in Geneva. We have to “wait for science to tell us when boosters are needed, what groups of people and which vaccines need boosters,” she explained.

From a “moral and ethical” point of view, it is also not good in his eyes that the rich countries inject the third dose “when the rest of the world is waiting for their first injection”, added Soumya Swaminathan.

“There are enough vaccines in the world but they are not going to the right places, in the right order”, for his part said the adviser to the director general of the WHO, Bruce Aylward. For him, two doses should be given to the most vulnerable people in the world before the boosters are given to people already fully vaccinated. “We are very, very far from it,” he added.

Recall campaign announced in United States

For their part, the American health authorities announced on Wednesday the launch of a recall campaign for the anti-Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for all Americans from September 20.

Americans who have received one of these sera will be able to request a third injection eight months after the second, senior health officials said, highlighting the current surge in the Delta variant epidemic in the country.

“The available data clearly show that the protection against infection with Sars-CoV-2 begins to decline over time after the first doses of vaccine”, they justified in a statement signed by the director of the Centers for prevention and Disease Control (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, and US Drugs Agency (FDA) Acting Chief Janet Woodcock.

Several countries have already started recall campaigns targeting parts of their population, including Israel, which recently lowered the minimum age for a third dose to 50 years.

France, for its part, will set up an anti-Covid vaccine booster campaign at the start of the school year by administering a third dose to people who received the first injections at the very beginning of the year.

With AFP and Reuters