WHO says no evidence healthy children, adolescents need COVID-19 vaccine booster shots

The World Health Organization's (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan on Tuesday said that there is “no evidence right now” to suggest that healthy children and adolescents need booster shots to supplement their COVID-19 vaccinations. While speaking at a media briefing, Swaminathan said that while there seems to be some waning of vaccine immunity over time against the Omicron variant, more research needs to be done to ascertain who needs booster doses. She said that WHO’s advisory group, SAGE (Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization) will meet later this week in a bid to consider how countries should think about giving booster shots. 

“There is no evidence right now that healthy children or heavy adolescents need boosters. No evidence at all," she said.

“The aim is to protect the most vulnerable, to protect those at highest risk of severe disease and dying, those are our elderly population, immunocompromised with underlying conditions and also health care workers,” Soumya Swaminathan added. 

Elderly or immunocompromised people may need three or four COVID shots 

During the same press briefing, the executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, Dr Michael Ryan, informed that the health agency still hasn’t figured out how often or how many doses people will ultimately need. He said that health experts may eventually redefine how many doses are required in the primary series of COVID-19 shots. Ryan added that while most healthy people may need just two shots, the elderly or immunocompromised may need three or four. 

Meanwhile, it is to mention that Swaminathan’s and Ryan’s comments come amid a time when Israel has already begun offering boosters to children as young as 12. It also comes almost two weeks after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorised the use of a third dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 17. Moreover, Germany, earlier this week, had also become the latest nation to recommend that all children between the ages of 12 and 17 receive a COVID-19 booster shot. Hungary has also done so. 

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