"No country will emerge from the covid-19 pandemic with booster doses of vaccines," the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Wednesdaywhich has spoken out against giving additional doses when part of the world's population, the poorest, particularly in Africa, remain unimmunized.

According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was speaking at the organization's regular press video conference on the evolution of the pandemic, "indiscriminate booster programs" of vaccination "tend to prolong the pandemic rather than end it, diverting available doses to countries that already have high vaccination rates, thus giving the virus more opportunities to spread and mutate."

However, the warning of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus comes when several countries, including Portugal, advance with the strengthening of vaccination against covid-19 with a third dose. Israel has decided to administer a fourth dose to people over 60 and health professionals because of the Omicron variant of the new coronavirus, considered more contagious.

Cited by Lusa, the WHO director-general stressed that the conventional doses of covid-19 vaccines (two doses) "remain effective" against SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron, and that "the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths are from unvaccinated people and not from people who do not have booster doses."

A week ago, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there was "no evidence of the effectiveness of the booster doses" against Omicron, spreading very rapidly at an unprecedented rate.

According to the WHO expert committee on vaccine policy, at least 126 countries have given instructions for a booster dose or a supplementary vaccination (e.g. of children), of which 120 have already started inoculation campaigns for this purpose. Most of the countries are wealthy.