Vulnerable people can get Covid booster shot: WHO Europe

Copenhagen, Aug 31 : The European office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has asked vulnerable citizens to take boosters shots of Covid-19 vaccine, amid surging cases of coronavirus across the continent, media reports said on Tuesday.

However, this contradicts WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' stance on Covid boosters. Ghebreyesus said last week that boosters are not a priority in the face of slow vaccinations in low and middle-income countries.

The high transmission rate of Covid-19 across Europe is "deeply worrying," said the WHO Europe calling for vaccination to be ramped up, Euronews reported.

"In 15 countries, there is a decrease in vaccination uptake even when the vaccines are available. So we have to work on multiple fronts and one of them is to decrease vaccine hesitancy," Dr Hans Kluge, regional director of WHO Europe, was quoted as saying to Euronews in an interview.

"The first priority is to ensure that the most vulnerable get their first and second shot. Then we have to do it all, meaning that in those countries where we see that people with decreased immunity, the elderly people, have a waning immunity against severe disease, then those countries can consider a third dose," he added.

According to the WHO, just 10 countries have administered 75 per cent of all vaccine supply, while low-income countries have vaccinated barely 2 per cent of their people.

Earlier this month, the WHO chief also called for a temporary moratorium on boosters to help shift supply to those countries that have not even been able to vaccinate their health workers and at-risk communities and are now experiencing major spikes.

"But we should do it all, meaning sharing doses with those countries which still didn't fully vaccinate health care workers, and at the same time look at the evolving evidence," Kluge said.

"We know in the pan-European region for example that there are at least 28 countries which have a surplus of doses. So those doses need to be shared as soon as possible," he noted.

Kluge also said that as summer comes to an end, the epidemiological picture across the 53 countries it monitors "is mixed" with a "greater than 10 per cent increase in 14-day case incidence", particularly in areas with low vaccinations. The last week also saw an "11 per cent increase in the number of deaths in the region".

So far, the region has recorded more than 64 million confirmed cases and 1.3 million deaths, the report said.