Aurelian Breeden reports in the New York Times:
France and Germany on Thursday reiterated plans to administer booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines to older and more vulnerable people, despite calls from the World Health Organization to halt such shots and send more doses to poorer nations instead. Those eligible for boosters would include patients with weakened immune systems, older people, and nursing home residents starting in September. The European Commission, is already gearing up for a change in approach. It signed a third contract with Pfizer-BioNTech for 1.8 billion doses, and ordered an additional 150 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine.France and Germany on Thursday reiterated plans to administer booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines to older and more vulnerable people, despite calls from the World Health Organization to halt such shots and send more doses to poorer nations instead.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, speaking in an Instagram video, said on Thursday that “in all likelihood a third dose will be necessary, not for everyone immediately, but in any case for the most vulnerable and the most elderly.” He said his government was preparing to administer those shots starting in September.
Mr. Macron, who has used social media over the past few days to promote vaccines and address resistance to his government’s health pass strategy, said that the French government was following scientific findings that the level of antibodies in those populations declined more rapidly.
Germany had made a similar announcement earlier this week, as Western countries try to ramp up their vaccination campaigns to keep infections in check and avoid the return of lockdown measures.
But there is no consensus among scientists on the need for booster shots, and some officials have said that administering a new round of doses in richer nations will only widen the gap with poorer countries.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said on Wednesday that while he understood richer nations’ concerns that they needed to protect their citizens, the world could not “accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it.”
German authorities rejected those accusations on Thursday.
“We want to provide the vulnerable groups in Germany with a preventative third vaccination and at the same time support the vaccination of as many people in the world as possible,” Germany’s health ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said those eligible for boosters would include patients with weakened immune systems, older peopley, and nursing home residents, adding that Germany was also donating at least 30 million doses to countries where vaccination campaigns have been lagging.
While the European Union has bought vaccine doses in bulk for all its members, national governments plan their own vaccination strategies.
Emer Cooke, the head of the European Medicines Agency, told Politico Europe on Tuesday that there was not enough data to prove that a booster shot was necessary, and that approved coronavirus vaccines remained effective against the Delta variant.
Some populations might require an extra dose of the coronavirus vaccine, she said, but that “does not mean that there’s a need universally across the population.” Although member nations might have “very legitimate reasons” to divert from the agency’s guidance, Ms. Cooke said, doing so would “create confusion.”
Still, the European Commission, the E.U. administrative arm that has taken on the task of vaccine ordering, is already gearing up for a change in approach. In May, it signed a third contract with Pfizer-BioNTech for 1.8 billion doses, and ordered an additional 150 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine in June.
On Thursday, Moderna said that while its vaccine remained effective six months after the second dose, a third one would likely be needed because of the Delta variant.
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