The vaccines are effective enough to prevent severe Covid-19, so the general public doesn’t need a third vaccine, according to an article in The Lancet on Monday.
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Fearing the spread of the most contagious coronavirus delta, many countries have started offering additional doses of Covid-19, but World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a temporary moratorium on such practices and urged instead to help provide vaccines to the poorest countries, where millions of people have not even received the first Covid-19 vaccine.
Scientists, including experts from the WHO, have concluded that at present, even with the delta type, no additional doses are needed by the general public.
The authors who reviewed observational studies and clinical trials found that vaccines are still very effective against severe symptoms of Covid-19 in all major types of the virus, including the delta type, although they have less success in preventing asymptomatic disease.
Researcher Anna Maria Enao Restrepo, one of the leading authors of an article published in The Lancet, said there was no credible evidence that the protection provided by vaccines against serious disease would be significantly reduced, according to currently available research.
She emphasized that the main purpose of vaccination was to prevent serious illness, and said that vaccines should be provided to people who had not yet been vaccinated.
“If the vaccines are used where they would be most beneficial, they could speed up the end of the pandemic, hindering the further development of options,” she added.
France has started offering a third dose of Covid-19 vaccine to the elderly and people with weakened immune systems to other countries, but Israel has gone even further by offering additional doses to all people over the age of 12 who had been vaccinated against Covid-19 five months ago.
A study published by The Lancet concludes that current strains of coronavirus are not sufficiently developed to escape the protection provided by current Covid-19 vaccines.
The authors believe that in the event of the emergence of new viral mutations that could circumvent this protection, it would be better to create modified vaccine variants specifically adapted to these mutations.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adanom Gebreesus has called on countries to abandon the idea of offering additional doses to people who have already been vaccinated, at least until the end of this year.
The WHO has set a target of having at least 10% of the population vaccinated in all countries by the end of September and at least 40% by the end of the year. The organization hopes that by mid-next year, at least 70% of the world’s population will have been vaccinated against Covid-19.
Tedros pointed out that almost all rich countries have reached the 10% target and more than 70% of rich countries have reached the 40% target, but no low-income country has met any of these targets.
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