Vaccine booster false promise

For some time, the COVID-19 crisis in India seemed to teach the world Valuable lesson: An uncontrolled outbreak of coronavirus poses a threat everywhere, and decisively, without a more equitable vaccine distribution, there is no hope of controlling this pandemic.

Recognizing their responsibility to support India, other countries have sent essential assistance, including the highly needed oxygen and the raw materials needed to produce the COVID-19 vaccine.The United States has promised to donate 60 million doses to countries in need of them (the numbers are Almost double Since then), examples followed by other governments.

However, as Delta variants spread around the world, threatening the new freedom of a widely vaccinated population with unrestricted pandemics and testing the long-term efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine, the United States and one Several wealthy countries, including the wealthy countries of the department, have announced plans to begin managing booster shots to provide additional protection against the Delta.Israel, the first country to offer a third dose of Pfizer vaccine last month, has already expanded its eligibility to people. 30 years old..At the same time, the majority of the world’s population has not yet received Even once Of the COVID-19 vaccine.

This is not just an ethical issue. Of course, individual governments have a responsibility to protect their own people, which is what richer nations are trying to do. However, it makes more sense to administer booster shots before most of the rest of the world is vaccinated. This ultimately undermines these countries’ goals of controlling the coronavirus and regaining normal sensations. More fundamentally, this decision proves that more than a year has passed since the pandemic occurred. Vaccine nationalism dangerWealthy nations are repeating their previous mistakes.

So far, high-income countries have dominated the world’s vaccine supply and have overwhelmingly (naturally) directed their population towards those doses. However, this came at the expense of low- and middle-income countries, many of whom cannot afford to order multiple vaccine candidates like wealthy countries do.This allowed countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Israel to be fully vaccinated. 51%, 61%, 63% Each of their population-the level of protection that allowed them to lift many of their public health restrictions.But that’s also why more countries remain behind the vaccine line: but One third The world’s population has been vaccinated with at least one COVID-19 vaccine, and those individuals are predominantly concentrated in high-income countries.Less than 1% The proportion of people in low-income countries is fully vaccinated.

This apparent disagreement is why some richer national decisions to administer booster doses Decreased vaccine efficacy The threat of blockade to Delta and in the future is not well accepted by the global health community.who Called Countries that postpone boosters until at least the end of September so that other countries in the world can catch up. 1 official I likened it to a booster Give a life jacket to someone who already has it, while drowning others.

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Implicit in this discussion is the belief that all booster shots represent a dose that may have been given on behalf of a person who has not received any vaccine protection. And in some respects it is true. Vaccine production capacity has improved since the beginning of the pandemic, but the world does not yet have sufficient doses for everyone.according to NatureAn internal analysis by WHO estimates that if all high- and middle-income countries provide boosters to all citizens over the age of 50, they will use more than 850 million vaccine supplies available worldwide.Other health professionals business This practice could be diverted to doses of 1 to 2 billion doses next year.Applying these numbers to the context, they are roughly 11 billion times Only 70% of the world’s population needs to be vaccinated.At present, the world is At least 2023 Before dose supply meets global demand.

Still, vaccine production is expanding, and researchers at the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, who are tracking global vaccine procurement, have limited distribution challenges as a major barrier to ending the pandemic. I noticed that I was gradually overtaking the supply. “Our best estimate is that the world is producing nearly a billion doses this month, and I think it will continue to grow,” Andrea Taylor, Program Assistant Director at the Center, told me. .. “There is still a supply problem, but it is shrinking.”

This is because the U.S. government has blamed WHO for the booster program.Wrong choiceIn effect, wealthy countries do not have to choose between giving priority to their citizens or supporting other parts of the world. Sufficient vaccines will soon be available for both.But the keyword here is soon.. For the time being, there are inevitably questions because there are not enough doses to avoid. Who should be prioritized?

So far, the answer from wealthy countries is My population.. There is nothing wrong with the government that wants to protect its citizens. But if Delta taught the world something, it would be a loser’s game to protect his masses at the expense of other parts of the world, more transmission, more variants, and more. Is to bring you a band-aid solution. Boosters alone are not enough to protect those who receive boosters from new and dangerous variants that may appear elsewhere.

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If the goal is to end the pandemic, “what we have to do is to prioritize ending the global infection,” Taylor said. “If we don’t do that by pushing out the first and second doses around the world, we’ll need more boosters in high-income countries … that doesn’t solve the problem. Kick the can further ahead. only.”

Other crises like India and other variants should not be necessary for wealthy nations to learn from early pandemic mistakes. If they do not pay attention to the Delta lessons, it is almost certainly destined to learn the remaining letters of the Greek alphabet and all the lessons that accompany it.