France to apply a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine | The WHO demanded that the authorities wait at least “until the end of September”

On July 25, the National Assembly and the Senate had already approved the text and raised, with it, a strong protest movement in total disagreement with a provision which, Although it does not force people to be vaccinated (except for hospital staff), it is in effect establishing a society of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. where people without a post (owners of restaurants, bars, etc.) become health inspectors.

Third dose

Last weekend, some 200,000 people demonstrated in France against this measure. The last hope of modifying the provision was in the hands of the Constitutional Council, but the body legalized most of its backbone. At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed in a video posted on Instagram that France “is preparing, like other European countries” to inject “a third dose” of the Covid-19 vaccine at the end of summer (September). This decision now poses a new operational and health puzzle for the poorest countries which do not have full and equal access to vaccines.

The French head of state specified that this third dose “will not be for everyone immediately” but will have as priority destination for “the most fragile and the oldest” people who have already received two first doses. So far only two countries, Germany and Israel, have announced that they will conduct a third vaccination campaign with what is called a ‘booster dose’.. The relevance of revaccinating the population for the third time is the subject of debate among scientists and the same WHO (World Health Organization) has questioned its validity because it would again fracture the already shameful distribution of available vaccines. between rich and poor countries. In this direction, WHO called for a moratorium on the third dose “at least until the end of September”.

The proportion of vaccines distributed between very rich and very poor countries shows staggering percentages. By July 2021, more than 3.3 billion doses had been administered and only 1% of that number went to poor countries. Wherever you look at it, the end result of the pandemic is a global tragedy. More than 4 million people have died from the virus, a figure “surely underestimated” according to statements by WHO director Tederos Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The accuracy of deaths is all the more imprecise as the Delta variant of the virus is spreading at high speed across the planet and reliable or up-to-date data is not always available. On the contrary, the data which describes the selfishness of the great Western powers are indisputable: to reach the theoretical threshold of collective immunity it would be necessary to vaccinate 70% of the planet, which represents 11 billion doses. Without a more equitable distribution of the available vaccines, it will be impossible to reach this theoretical threshold immediately. According to a study carried out by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center in Durham (North Carolina) at this rate and with the hoarding of vaccines by the West, planetary immunity would not be achieved until 2023.

Uneven vaccine distribution

Rich countries have made a lot of promises, but they have done little to actually share vaccines. Idealistic sighs and promises to make the vaccine a “global public good” (Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping) have remained in short-lived rhetoric. It is a private good and only those who can pay get it. According to the NGO Oxfam, at least 67 of the most disadvantaged countries will not receive any vaccine in 2021, which is equivalent to 16% of the world’s population. In Haiti, for example, 0.1 dose of vaccine was administered per 100 inhabitants. The world depends, in fact, on the production capacities of a handful of laboratories, which in turn set the best price for the vaccine. It also depends on the rich nations which do not accumulate the doses. This is what has happened until today. In France, more than 50% of the population has already been vaccinated in two doses and in the United States, 47% against 2% for the whole of Africa. Southern countries have already been excluded from the vaccine before the start of the first vaccination campaigns at the end of 2020.

75% of the available vaccines were administered in only 10 countries, all of them very rich (source WHO). In June 2021, the most powerful countries in the world pledged to donate nearly 1 billion doses to the poorest (11 billion are needed). However, the compromise unfolds in hyper slow motion and the Delta variant of the virus at lightning speed. The vaccination world map paints a ridiculous portrait in six months of a policy marked by “vaccine nationalism”. In countries with substantial benefits, 86 doses are distributed per 100 inhabitants, while in the poorest 29, the ratio drops to one vaccine per 100 inhabitants. This is equivalent to 1% of the 3.5 billion doses administered worldwide.

The West has all the conditions in its hands: the laboratories that produce the vaccines are in Western territory, the production plants are too, and they also have the money to fund both. The hoarding of vaccine production and the inequality it creates leaves a world divided in two, where some run to life and others to death.