There are concerns that without vaccinating developing countries, we are 'no way near' getting out of this pandemic.
That's according to pharmacist Laura Dowling, who says getting developing nations vaccinated makes sense for us all.
She told Alive and Kicking talking about vaccinating the under-12s here should not be happening.
"I think that it's great that we have such a buy-in to the vaccines... we have 57.37 of people in Ireland have had one or more vaccines - which is brilliant.
"But Nigeria have only had .68% of vaccines - now that is just crazy that we are slapping ourselves on the back and wanting to go back out socialising.
"We've all had a very tough year and I get that, and it has been so tough; but unless our other humans in the developing world are vaccinated, we're no way near getting out of this.
"As we all know, we've learnt from listening to all the immunologists and all the scientists, that when a group of unvaccinated people are together the virus spreads from one to another.
"But it also mutates and we can get more dangerous mutations, we can get more transmissible mutations - like what we've seen in the Delta variant.
"And we know that the Delta variant is also infecting younger people more - so there's that worry too.
"If the virus is allowed to spread throughout our developing countries, because they're not vaccinated, then we're just going to be in a constant cycle of lockdowns, of fear, of variants, of mutations.
"And there's going to be no point in it all - we actually do have to look after our developing countries".
'We're just damned lucky'
And she says we are very lucky to live where we do.
"We could very easily be in a developing country ourselves, we're just damned lucky that we're not.
"So instead of procrastinating over whether or not to vaccinate our under-12s, which is a long time away I think anyway, we should be pushing the vaccines to these developing countries for sure".
On vaccines and vaccine hesitancy, she says it is important to keep it in context.
"I think what we have to remember is that vaccines, by their very nature, have saved lives for the last many many decades in our world.
"And it's the reason why we all live so long, it's the reason why babies don't die young.
"Our polio vaccines, our measles vaccines, our smallpox vaccines: people used to just get very, very sick and die.
"So vaccines are the way forward, but they're part of a bigger picture of sanitation and clean water as well."
Her comments echo those of Professor Luke O'Neill, who said last week that giving vaccines away to developing countries will help stop variants.
He told The Pat Kenny Show: "There's a remote chance of a nasty variant emerging that'll break through everything and then we'll go back to square one.
"That's our last remaining scientific worry, in a way.
"This is why we shouldn't vaccinate the under-12s in my opinion at the moment: give the vaccine away to developing countries to stop variants.
"Our biggest concern is new variants really... to stop it, and it's running rampant in all these countries.
"So just in case a nasty variant crops up we've got to prepare, in a way, for that - and try to mitigate against it by getting widespread, global vaccination".
