NIAID director Anthony Fauci told ABC's "This Week" Sunday that urging Americans to receive a coronavirus booster shot will not contribute to global vaccine disparities.
What he's saying: "We're going to be boosting as many people as we possibly can," Fauci told host George Stephanopoulos. "But you can also simultaneously make doses available to the developing world, and the United States, quite frankly, has done more than all of the other countries combined."
"We're very well aware of the issue with equity, and we're very firmly in the corner of equity," he added.
"You can take care of your own country and provide doses to the low- and middle-income countries."
The backdrop: The World Health Organization has called on countries to stop pushing citizens to get booster shots as a global vaccine disparity persists.
But the emergence of the Omnicron variant has turbocharged the push for boosters, and experts say a booster may soon become a requirement to be considered "fully vaccinated," Axios' Tina Reed writes.
Fauci rebuffed the notion that a booster vaccine push would "worsen" the disparities, adding that the U.S. has "given over 300 million doses to over 100 countries."
