The World Health Organization is seeking a pause on administering SARS-CoV-2 vaccine boosters, CNN reports.
"WHO is calling for a moratorium on boosters until at least the end of September to enable at least 10 percent of the population of every country to be vaccinated," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, said during a press briefing, according to CNN. "To make that happen, we need everyone's cooperation, especially the handful of countries and companies that control the global supply of vaccines."
As the Washington Post reports, countries in Europe have been planning to roll out vaccine boosters soon, while Israel and Russia have already begun giving out boosters. The US, meanwhile, has said more data is needed to determine whether a booster is necessary, though has been weighing one for immunocompromised individuals.
Tedros noted, according to the AP, that richer countries have given 100 vaccine doses for every 100 people, while poorer countries have given 1.5 doses per 100 people. Bruce Aylward, one of Tedros' advisors, tells it that as the emergence of new variants has shown, "we cannot get out of [the pandemic] unless the whole world gets out of it together. And with the huge disparity in vaccination coverage, we're simply not going to be able to achieve that."