DUBLIN, Dec 14, Reuters - The initial course of COVID 19 vaccines should be given to unprotected groups in the world before giving booster shots to vulnerable groups, World Health Organisation WHO Emergency Director Mike Ryan said on Tuesday.
A major study on Tuesday found that two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID 19 vaccine appear to have given 70% protection against hospitalisation in South Africa in recent weeks, suggesting weaker efficacy against the new Omicron variant.
Ryan said he expected that the vaccines would provide significant protection against hospitalisation and death, but he said that the data coming through was very preliminary and the WHO did not have enough of it yet to make a full determination.
People are always asking if we should go for a primary vaccine or boosters, but the reality is that we should be doing both, Ryan told an online event.
We should focus on getting those who are unvaccinated vaccinated as quickly as possible and then giving booster doses to those in vulnerable groups. Ryan said that Omicron would most likely replace Delta as the dominant variant over time and governments needed to focus on basic protective measures such as mask wearing and make sure their hospitals were ready for the world to come to an end.
He said that even if Omicron turns out to be a milder disease in an individual patient, there was no doubt that the rapidly rising force of infection would cause more hospitalisations in the coming weeks due to the sheer weight of numbers.
Every health system needs to get ready, Ryan said. We are going to see a very large Omicron wave. We need to protect the health system, and we need to protect those we love.