The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday that it “strongly supports” the administration of COVID-19 booster doses, reversing its previous stance that boosters were not necessary for healthy people who are fully vaccinated.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebereyesus, WHO’s director-general, last year called for a moratorium on booster shots for healthy adults through the end of 2021 to counter the “profound inequity” in global vaccine access.
“Blanket booster programs are likely to prolong the pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate,” he said in a news briefing.
“The near-and medium-term supply of the available vaccines has increased substantially, however, vaccine equity remains an important challenge and all efforts to address such inequities are strongly encouraged,” WHO stated.
WHO said that it will continue to review and assess the public health implications of Omicron on the performance of the vaccines, including a subvariant of Omicron known as BA.2, which is believed to be more contagious.
“Given widespread transmission of Omicron globally, the possibility of its continued evolution is high, and a new variant may emerge before an updated vaccine can be produced and delivered at scale,” it added.
“BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1 so we expect to see BA.2 increasing in detection around the world,” Van Kerkhove told reporters during a WHO briefing, adding that there is no indication about whether the subvariant might cause a more severe illness than the original.