Rich Countries Fail the Third World at Their Own Peril

 We really need to do better about distributing vaccines worldwide.

The WHO maintains that, so far, clinical evidence does not indicate that booster doses are needed to prevent severe outcomes and death from COVID-19, a point that US officials do not dispute. "The vaccines are holding up very, very well against the severe end of the disease spectrum," Kate O'Brien, director of the WHO's Department of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals, said in a press briefing Wednesday. "We're not asking to withhold something for which there is a strong set of evidence that it is needed."

Meanwhile, in low-income countries, initial doses of vaccines have yet to reach even the elderly and frontline health workers—those most vulnerable to severe outcomes and death. In a press briefing earlier this month, the executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, Mike Ryan, likened giving boosters in high-income countries to "hand[ing] out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets while we're leaving other people to drown."