WHO Recommends Not Vaccinating Children Widely against Corona

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that children and adolescents not be widely vaccinated against the Coronavirus (known also as COVID-19) at present.

The recommendation came in a statement posted on the organization's website after the meeting of the strategic advisory group of its experts.

The United Nations (UN) organization explained that "the probability of an acute course of the disease in these age groups is small," noting that "all countries have not yet achieved high vaccination coverage among groups at risk of infection with the Coronavirus."

For his part, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said earlier, "The year 2022 should be the last year of the Corona epidemic."

The WHO warned of a common delusion that, "the booster doses against Covid-19 will be enough to overcome the epidemic."

"No country, thanks to the booster doses, can overcome the epidemic," said Ghebreyesus at a press conference in Geneva. "These doses will not give us the green light to celebrate (the victory over the epidemic) as we previously expected."

He pointed out that "the promotion programs without discrimination may lead to prolonging the pandemic, rather than putting an end to it, by transferring the available vaccines to countries with a high vaccination rate, which gives the virus the possibility of spreading and transforming on a larger scale."

He said, "It is important to remember that most hospitalizations and deaths were recorded among those who did not receive the vaccine, not among those who missed the booster dose. We must be very clear that vaccines remain effective against "Delta" and "Omicron".

According to the WHO expert committee on vaccination policy, at least 126 countries have given instructions that the booster dose or an additional vaccine (for children, for example), and 120 of these countries have started booster vaccination campaigns.