Wealthy countries are finalizing plans to roll out Covid-19 booster programs to counter the threat from waning vaccine immunity, decisions that will further squeeze the supplies available to the developing world. France this week joined the US and at least two dozen other countries by confirming it would administer third vaccine doses, capping the debate over the use of boosters that has rolled on all summer.
Doing so has meant going against the World Health Organization, which has called for a moratorium on boosters and for any spare doses to be given to less vaccinated countries. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, this week questioned whether boosters were “effective at all”, insisting they should only go to those with weakened immune systems.
A Financial Times analysis of programs in Israel, Turkey, and Chile, three of the countries giving out boosters, show in excess of 10m have been deployed, more than the total vaccine doses administered in half a dozen African nations combined.
Nigeria and Ethiopia, Africa’s two most populous countries, as well as Chad, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya have vaccinated a combined 9-37m people, which includes supplies received as part of the Covax vaccine sharing scheme. Only 2 percent of Africa’s population has been fully vaccinated, the lowest coverage of any continent.