WHO Advises Rich Countries Against Hoarding Vaccines Amidst Omicron Fear

Geneva: Fearing that the Omicron scare could strain global supplies of vaccines once again due to hoarding by rich countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday advised individuals against the widespread use of boosters in their populations and instead send doses to low-income countries that have largely lacked access to them.

“What is going to shut down disease is for everybody who is especially at risk of disease to become vaccinated,” Dr. Kate O’Brien, head of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals told news agency AFP. “We seem to be taking our eye off that ball in countries.”

Vaccine makers are racing to update their COVID-19 shots against the newest coronavirus threat even before it’s clear a change is needed. The European Union’s drug regulator said Thursday it is closely following the spread of the new variant and whether new vaccines will be required to fight it.

Months of short supplies of COVID-19 vaccines have begun to ease over the last two months or so, and doses are finally getting to needier countries — such as through donations and the U.N.-backed COVAX program — and WHO wants that to continue. It has long decried “vaccine inequity” by which most doses have gone to people in rich countries, whose leaders locked down big stockpiles as a precautionary measure.

“As we head into whatever the omicron situation is going to be, there is risk that the global supply is again going to revert to high-income countries hoarding vaccine to protect — in a sense, in excess — their opportunity for vaccination, and a sort of no-regrets kind of approach,” O’Brien was quoted as saying.

“It’s not going to work,” she added. “It’s not going to work from an epidemiological perspective, and it’s not going to work from a transmission perspective unless we actually have vaccine going to all countries, because where transmission continues, that’s where the variants are going to come from.”

Some wealthy governments want to leave no stone unturned to get their populations as close to full vaccination as possible. Many questions remain about the severity, transmissibility and resistance to vaccines of the new omicron variant, which emerged last month in southern Africa and has shown early signs of spreading faster than the widespread and deadly delta variant driving the pandemic now.

According to WHO, individuals in rich countries should follow the policies of their governments, some of which are enticing people to get boosters, which are additional doses aimed to buck up immunity from earlier jabs that wanes over time.

“An individual in a country, their dose is not going to get shipped to another country because they don’t take the dose,” O’Brien said. “It is country governments, not individuals, who are making decisions that could influence the equitable distribution of vaccines to other countries.”