Why there shouldn’t be a fourth Covid vaccine – experts weigh in

Nigel Farage discusses concerns about COVID boosters

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The UK’s vaccine rollout has been praised by many, with a staggering 90.2 percent of those aged 12 and above having received at least one dose of the vaccine. Britain may have had tremendous success with its vaccine programme, but as Israel and Chile start to roll out fourth vaccines experts are accessing whether constant boosters will actually help the world out of the pandemic.

A staggering 35,813,659 Britons have received a booster vaccine as of January 10, 2022, and this equates to 62 percent of the total population aged 12 and over.

Despite this impressive uptake, the UK isn’t currently offering a fourth dose of the vaccine in line with other countries such as Israel and Chile.

Experts have now condemned wealthy nations for rolling out fourth vaccines, while many citizens of poorer nations are unable to receive even their first vaccine.

The experts argue that we cannot move out of the pandemic until populations around the world are vaccinated.

They add that repeated boosters every few months for those in wealthy countries won’t combat coronavirus as this is a global disease.

Indeed, health experts have constantly repeated the mantra: “No one is safe until everyone is safe.”

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization (WHO) said: “Booster after booster in a small number of countries will not end the pandemic while billions remain completely unprotected.”

Professor Shabir Madhi has expressed his frustration at countries that are administering fourth vaccines while many in the world remain unvaccinated.

He has seen first-hand how new variants can have devastating effects on largely unvaccinated populations as he advises the South African government on its vaccination programme.

Many South Africans haven’t had access to the vaccine which led to a huge spike in hospitalisations when the new Omicron variant emerged.

This new variant became a global issue and also caused havoc in countries with largely vaccinated populations such as the UK, demonstrating why it is so important to ensure all countries are vaccinated in a bid to reduce the spread of new variants globally.

Professor Madhi told Politico that plans to roll out fourth vaccines are “completely short-sighted.”

He added: “I really don’t believe that countries that are going with those additional booster doses at the mass population level have got a clear goal – unless they truly believe that they can somehow eliminate the virus and then keep their borders shut to the rest of the world to prevent importation of further variants.”

Will the UK rollout fourth doses of the vaccine?

A programme of fourth vaccines in the UK seems unlikely in the near future.

The chair of the JCVI, Andrew Pollard, told the BBC it isn’t “affordable [or] sustainable” to vaccinate everyone every four to six months globally.

He added: “We haven’t even managed to vaccinate everyone in Africa with one dose so we’re certainly not going to get to a point where fourth doses for everyone is manageable.”

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