Door-to-door campaigns against polio, such as this one in Kenya in 2018, could help spread COVID-19. By Leslie RobertsScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.“A devil’s choice.” That’s how Seth Berkley, head of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, describes the dilemma facing global health organizations in the past few weeks.
They could either continue to support mass vaccination campaigns in poor countries and risk inadvertently helping to spread COVID-19—or recommend their suspension, inevitably triggering an upsurge of many other infectious diseases.In the end, they chose the latter.
As Science reported last week, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative on 24 March recommended suspending polio vaccination campaigns until