UK medical regulator approves coronavirus booster shots

The United Kingdom medical regulator approved the Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines to be used as coronavirus booster shots on Thursday. 

June Raine, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), announced the decision to approve the two vaccines for booster shots, saying it is “an important regulatory change as it gives further options for the vaccination programme.”

Although the booster shots were approved, a program for how they should be implemented is up to the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

The MHRA statement says the JCVI will determine when the booster shots should be given and who they should be given to when they are implemented. 

The JCVI said they have been looking into booster shots for the vulnerable and could implement a program as soon as the end of September, according to Reuters. 

Plans for rich countries to begin giving booster shots have been decried by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others saying doses should be donated to poorer countries first.

The WHO called on rich countries not to begin giving booster shots until 2022 on Wednesday.

“We have been calling for vaccine equity from the beginning, not after the richest countries have been taken care of,” WHO Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference. 

“I will not stay silent when companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” he added.