GENEVA: The World Health Organization’s vaccine advisers on Monday recommended people with weakened immune systems should be offered an additional dose of all WHO-approved Covid-19 vaccines.
The UN health agency’s experts also said over-60s fully immunised with China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines should be offered an additional third vaccine dose.
The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE) stressed it was not recommending an additional booster dose for the population at large, which is already being rolled out in some countries.
The WHO wants a moratorium on booster doses for the general population until the end of the year to prioritise first doses in the dozens of nations starved of vaccines.
The WHO’s target of getting 10 percent of the population in each country fully vaccinated by the end of September was missed by 56 states. However almost 90 percent of high-income countries hit the target.
SAGE said it would review the issue of general booster doses on November 11.
Several Covid-19 vaccines have been given WHO approval for emergency use during the pandemic: Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen, Moderna, Sinopharm, Sinovac and AstraZeneca.
They are all two-dose vaccines, except the Janssen jab.
The WHO is also on the verge of deciding whether to give emergency use listing (EUL) to India’s Bharat Biotech jab.
SAGE held a four-day meeting last week to review the latest information and data on a range of vaccines for Covid-19 and other diseases.

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