A group of experts has urged developed countries to fulfill their responsibilities towards humanity by not stockpiling COVID-19 vaccines for themselves. The head of the Oxford Vaccine Group said more people worldwide could die due to COVID-19 if leaders did not share doses of the vaccine with third-world countries.
GAVI vaccine alliance Chief Executive Set Berkeley and Professor Sir Andrew Pollard explained the harsh reality that vulnerable people in third-world countries, who have not received a single dose of the COVID vaccine, could succumb to the illness.
Experts cautioned, "Massive booster shots in the wealthy countries will send a worldwide message that boosters are needed everywhere. This will cause the system to fall short of millions of doses of the vaccine, leading to thousands of deaths worldwide. These would be the people who never got a chance to take even a single dose of the vaccine."
"If millions of people are given boosters in the absence of a strong scientific case, the moment when political leaders turned their back on the rest of humanity during one of its biggest crises would be forever remembered in history," they said.
The warning comes at a time when Israel has started giving booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to the elderly, even as the World Health Organization has requested countries that manufacture booster doses not to administer third doses to the public at least by the end of September.
According to WHO, doing this will help reduce the huge disparity in vaccine supplies between the rich and the poor countries. It has asked governments to start the third dose only when other countries, especially third-world nations, are able to get adequate doses so that large populations can be vaccinated with at least one dose.