Current data does not indicate that Covid-19 booster shots are needed, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, adding that the most vulnerable people worldwide should be fully vaccinated before high-income countries deploy a top-up.
The comments came just before the U.S. government said it planned to make the booster shots widely available to all Americans starting on September 20th as infections from the Delta variant of the coronavirus rise.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, asked about the need for boosters to increase protection against the disease, told a Geneva news conference: “We believe clearly that the data today does not indicate that boosters are needed.”
Further research was needed, she added.
WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward, referring to booster shots being administered in high-income countries, told reporters: “There is enough vaccine around the world, but it is not going to the right places in the right order.”
Two doses should be given to the most vulnerable worldwide before boosters are administered to those fully-vaccinated, he said, adding: “We are a long, long way from that.”
National solutions will not solve global problems. Strong national leadership & global solidarity is needed.
We are all interconnected & protecting only some countries leaves us all vulnerable. It is not OK to give boosters to those already protected leaving others to die. @WHO https://t.co/YzygSsKLKV— Maria Van Kerkhove (@mvankerkhove) August 18, 2021
The White House has said it is prepared to offer a third booster shot starting on that date to all Americans who completed their initial inoculation at least eight months ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.
The booster shots initially will be given primarily to healthcare workers, nursing home residents and older people, all of whom were among the first groups to be vaccinated in late 2020 and early 2021, the department said.
Top U.S. health officials said in a joint statement that they based their decision to offer boosters on data showing that the protectiveness of COVID-19 shots currently authorized in the United States begins to diminish in the months after the shots are given.
Reduced protection
The officials included President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci as well as the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
“The available data make very clear that protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection begins to decrease over time ... and in association with the dominance of the Delta variant, we are starting to see evidence of reduced protection against mild and moderate disease," the officials said.
"We conclude that a booster shot will be needed to maximize vaccine-induced protection and prolong its durability," they added.
The officials said that they anticipate that people who received Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine will also need boosters.
U.S. health officials previously authorized a third dose of vaccines from Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc for people with weak immune systems. The broader booster program follows mounting evidence that protection from the vaccines wanes after six or more months, particularly in older people with underlying health conditions.
Vaccinations have been widely available in the United States, unlike many other countries, and yet the Delta variant has caused what health experts describe as a pandemic of the unvaccinated as a significant number of people choose not to get inoculated.
