tv News Al Jazeera January 26, 2021 8:00pm-8:31pm +03
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the u.s. is always open for the people the world people pay attention to what you call you and i do see it is very good to bring the news to the world. 'd 100000 people have now died choose the pandemic in the united kingdom as the government grapples with new strains of the virus. its only plunges into political uncertainty as the prime minister resigns after losing his senate majority over his handling of the pandemic. adrian forget this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up.
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india's protesting farmers stormed the historic red force in new delhi as they march against the government's new group cultural. and ugandan opposition leader bobby wind towers to bring down president bush $78.00 in a year after being freed from house arrest. more than 100000 people in the u.k. have now died from covert 19 it's the highest number of deaths in europe britain's recorded around 3600000 infections and officials a stroll struggling to contain the outbreak let's go live now to bradford in the north of the u.k. algiers andrew simmons is the andrew of the start of the pandemic over a year ago or about a year ago the government's chief scientific adviser said that 20000 deaths would be a good outcome and that today we've passed this grim milestone. yes
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they brought expected but now it's here statistics mean more than numbers it's a shock that's right the way across the country the enormity of a 100000 deaths is well every family you can think of all ringback of the grief involved it is colossal i'm here outside bradford royal infirmary west yorkshire was one of the worst hit areas during 2020 it's been bad in the south east of england the past few months but now there's a period of reflection after so much loss all over the u.k. the enormity of what's happening is sometimes hard to absorb and. the health service is overloaded to near breaking point many hospitals have no more room left for the dead vos temporary mortuary is has been set up and now there's
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a landmark figure 100000 dead no one in our worst nightmares and to support it that would be 10 months into the pandemic was such a high loss of life this is bradford there are high levels of deprivation poor housing and ethnic minorities living close together here cove it has struck these communities hard and this muslim cemetery is where many of the dead are buried the grave digging is relentless and they're running out of space coated has frozen painful moments like this in the minds and hearts of too many people brothers fathers mothers daughters sons taken by the virus and the numbers increase remorselessly. 100000 lives lost and how many more to come the scale of this ongoing disaster can be measured in so many tragic ways the crowded
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graveyards and the challenge of trying to visualize how many lives have been lost as the counting of those who have died continues a look at the u.k.'s biggest football stadium wembley can help convert those to tos digs into some sort of scale imagine every seat here is one last life and even with the stadium full it would fall $10000.00 short of the total just as hard to visualize is the number of those in mourning charities that arrange counseling estimate the number of bereaved at more than half a 1000000 and we're worried that that's the silent crisis going on behind closed doors marie curie and end of life charities says lockdowns mean many of the bereaved aren't getting help those people are isolated so dealing with complex difficult the reason and that they might not be getting the support they need
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surely would gallagher's father died alone she's shielding because of a health condition and couldn't go to the funeral instead she was given protective clothing and allowed just a few minutes beside her father's body rituals we have around funerals. the new lives catherine ashton and are all taken from us not. so. around 100000 need to be. in bradford darkness doesn't stop the burials the global spread of covert carries with it a 2nd pandemic mass grief. well aside from all the grief there are questions to be onset of war. it is the u.k. got the highest figures for deaths in europe well a lot of criticism is aimed at the government for its handling of the pandemic it was late getting the whole process going in terms of set up it have no real
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access to large numbers of p.p.a. kits that's not protection and it's been behind the curve according to critics all the way through because scientists of a size the government to lock down 2 weeks late on the 2nd a coded lockdown and in that lockdown it was a 3 tier system that boris johnson introduced the north was was very much criticized and very heavily restricted the southeast was and then eventually the 3rd lock down was nationwide we're still in that process now but one in 5 people have tested positive be told by the testing trace system to actually go and isolate but they haven't done so that's one of the big problems always the prime minister will be answering some tough questions but that the next we're going to have to believe. the u.k.
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prime minister boris johnson is speaking to the media about his approach the pandemic the new measures to tackle the coronavirus systems sons and daughters and the many grandparents who are being taken into all those who grieve we make this pledge that when we've come through this crisis we will come together as a nation to remember everyone we lost and to honor the sofa's heroism of all those on the frontline who gave their lives to save others. we will remember the courage of countless working people not just our amazing n.h.s. and care workers but shop workers transport staff pharmacists teachers police forces emergency services and many others who kept our country going during our biggest crisis since the 2nd world war we will commemorate the small acts of
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kindness the spirit of volunteering and the daily sacrifice of millions who placed their lives on hold time and again as we fought each new wave of the virus buying time for our brilliant scientists to come to our aid in that moment of commemoration we will celebrate the genius and perseverance of those who discovered the vaccines and the immense national effort never seen before in our history which is now underway to distribute them one that is now seen as immunize over 6800000 people across the united kingdom and when those vaccines are finally freed us from this virus and put us on a path to recovery we will make sure we learn the lessons and reflect and prepare. and until that time the best or most important
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thing we can all do to honor the memory of those who've died is to work together with ever greater resolve to defeat this disease and that is what we will do. i'm going to hand over to chris for the slides at thank you prime minister on this very sad day i've just got 3 slides and the 1st is the number of people testing positive for cave 8 in the u.k. and as you can see on this graph the number peter is an extremely high number it is still at a very high number but it has been coming down. i want to just put one caution on that which is that office for national statistics data demonstrates a rather slower decrease and i think we need to be careful that we do not relax too early next slide please. the number of people in hospital with carry weight
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is still an incredibly high number over 35000 people and as you can see in this graph it is flattened off it is not still rising overall it is substantially above the peak in april and over this time it looks as if it's coming down very slightly in some areas including london and the southeast and east of england but there are some areas of the country where that where it is still not convincingly reducing so it stood at a very high level throughout the country and n.h.s. staff are working incredibly hard with many very sick created patients that patients next slide please. and finally on this day the number of deaths at the moment this looks as if this is flattened out but i say very high level so the most recent 7 day average for deaths the rolling 7 day average is 1242 deaths an incredibly high number and i
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think we have to be realistic that that the race of mortality the number of people dying a day will come down relatively slowly over the next 2 weeks and will probably be flat for a while now so we will still unfortunately be having additional deaths to add to that very sad total that the prime minister talked to that thank you very much thanks chris so i really want to. because of the last year. this sunday it'll be a year since the 1st 2 patients with corona virus were treated in hospital in newcastle and it'll be a year since the 1st flight returned from hand to aero park or spittle for quarantining of people returning to this country and it's a year in which over a quarter of a 1000000 severely ill coronavirus patients are being looked after in hospital. and
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those staff who've been looking after those patients also of course experience what this pandemic has meant as daughters and the sons and daughters parents and as grandchildren with family and friends and neighbors and so this is not a year that anybody's going to want to remember but nor 'd is it a year that across the health service any of us will ever forget will ever forget thanks very much so i mean it's good questions from the public know martine from the from the world with 401 on the way what a long term plans to allow return to travel and government we're going to flee with all the nations to install safe zone like innocence including potential databases and then in technology so we can get business growing as soon as possible . thanks marty well what we want to do is look at where we've got to on the 15th of
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february as you know that's the date by which we have to vaccinated all the most vulnerable groups the as the drunken vaccination and immunization one to 4 groups and see what where we are in terms of reducing the spread of infection and what we've done to protect the the most vulnerable i think martin be fair to say that as you've heard from from chris the the rate of infection is is still pretty forbidding lee high but at a certain stage we will want to be getting things open but that will depend on us continuing to succeed in driving the level of infection down and rolling out that vaccine program as fast as we possibly can and what i will be doing in the course of the next few days and weeks is sending out in more detail as soon as we can. when and how we want to get things open again but that will depend on us continuing
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to beat the disease that's going to mark from plymouth please welcome expect to extend school closures until easter what strategy with the government published to ensure no child is left behind. mark we will want to look very very carefully at the data of where we got to with the vaccination program before we make announcements about the timetables as i just said to to martine we're working as hard as we can to to get things open if you will recall we we really want to keep schools open and we want to reopen them but we must do it in a way that is safe and we must do it cautiously. i appreciate the huge efforts parents and now going to to teach their kids that at home to look after kids who should be in school
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a school is the best place for pupils and. i know the the the educational damage that we risk doing by protracted lockdowns and that's why the government continues to support all sorts of measures to help teachers big roll out of laptops 1300000 laptops that we've that we've provided and massive investments in in catch up tuition as well clearly that can't be in 2 touring and one to one help of all kinds that can't be done while kids are at home so what we will do mark is work around the clock as we come out of lockdown to ensure that the kids who have suffered people who have suffered from loss of learning of from differential learning across the country get the attention get the the the tuition and the support that they need in and we'll make sure that
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exams are fair and properly adjusted to reflect what everybody has been going through in the last 12 months let's go to to lorcan book of the b.b.c. . thank you very much and everyone's thoughts tonight are with those who lost loved ones and families left behind but mr near the start of hope in government was to contain the numbers to 20000 is now 5 times that what went so wrong and to the others can you give us any idea of the range of the possible totals that you are looking at now and what are your expectations or of the lure i think on this day i should just really repeat that i am deeply sorry for every life that has been lost and of course as good as as prime minister i take full responsibility for everything that the government to has done what i can tell you is that we truly did
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everything we could and continue to do everything that we can to minimize loss of life and to minimize suffering in what has been a very very difficult. stage very very difficult crisis for our country and we will we will continue to do that just as every government that is affected by this crisis around the world is continuing to do the same. i think in terms of the range of total is i've always been very careful not to try and make forward projections on terms of numbers. what i have said earlier on and i will repeat this is unfortunate we're going to see quite a lot more deaths over the next few weeks before the effects of the vaccines begin to be felt and i think we have to be realistic that that is going to happen but trying to actually put a number on that i don't think is helpful to anybody i think what we really should do is do everything we can to try and prevent that and that is
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a combination of really and the vaccines as the prime minister said but also all of us doing our bit in terms of staying at home except where we have to and that's something which i know the entire country is doing and that is really the key to the next few weeks. is that which is that fundamentally the driver of the death rate is the infection rate set against that we are seeing continuing improvements in hospital treatment for severely sick coronavirus patients are crudely the in hospital death rate has fallen from about a 3rd to a 5th and we do expect that there will be more treatments for coronavirus looking out over the next 6 to 18 months perhaps we've already seen those with some of the corticosteroids some of the rheumatoid arthritis drugs that are being repurposed there are antivirals in the pipeline so looking out i think we can see a world in which corona virus may be more treatable but for right now it's
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a combination of reducing infections and getting vaccinations done and as we stand here this evening one in 8 adults across this country have now had the 1st vaccination so we are well on our way thanks i'm with laura paul brand of i.t.v. . and he promised that prime minister 20000 deaths was once described as a good ad how would you describe the outcome of a 100000 deaths that you've presided over and see professor witty what would you say to catch him so you are telling us tonight that they are concerned about the gap between the phaistos of the vaccine and the 2nd and he were calling on the government to close that gap back down to the recommended number by pfizer or a i think that. you know you'd exhaust the 4th or reserve of misery there is little appalling and tragic loss of life and there's there's no question about
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it and all we can do now is chris is just been saying is work together with the with the tools that we have of the stay at home principle plus the vaccines to defeat the virus norm as i say i'm sure that we will. in terms of the gap i'm going to give a relatively technical answer because i think this is important to people who are listening to this you've had one vaccination actually understand the logic behind exciting this is a key question the 1st and really critical point which i think everybody understands is our limitation is the number of vaccines available that's true here it's true in every other country as well so therefore by definition if you give a vaccine twice to someone you can only give it to half the number of people over a period of time so the reason the 1st reason for delaying the course of the vaccines is to double over the next few weeks the number of people who can actually
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have a vaccine and get some protection the 2nd point on this is the great majority of the protection comes from the 1st vaccine that someone has the great majority and that's true for the pfizer vaccine it's true as a force for as you can see the maternal vaccine which is coming and it's true for the a vaccine so the great majority of this protection is from that 1st dose and by therefore what we are doing is we're giving a 1st dose to twice as many people now the 3rd thing people say is well might we have a situation where the immunity suddenly wanes between 3 weeks and 12 weeks and there is no evidence for that for natural immunity there is no evidence for that day's end vaccine and there is no evidence for that in the done a vaccine which is very similar to another on a one to the to the pfizer vaccine said that side of things i think we are confident of. the final reason that people are worried about as well could this give rise to
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a situation where there's an increased risk of something developing in terms of them a variant of this in the period of the 8 weeks and that's a theoretical worry but the maybe data certainly data from a zaid to imply we may get at least as strong a response and phrase at least possibly even a stronger response for having the longer period of time. i'm which means that will be a stronger paradigm for a longer period of protection afterwards which will help protect the vaccine as well as the individual person afterwards so there's lots of reasons why we think you know we talk very carefully about what the balance of this is but the balance of risk in terms of reducing the number of deaths in the community and i really want to stress that that is the aim of this is to maximize the number of people who get that 1st dose where the great majority of the protection comes from thanks top . coat sky minister you just said we truly did everything we could to save lives do you really not reflect on whether some of those 100000
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deaths could have been prevented if you made decisions differently and perhaps followed scientist recommendations more place late professor witty he wished you could have done more to encourage a lockdown a circuit breaker stage tested in september rather than having to wait till the end of october and society meant do you think that there was too much household mixing in december so i'm i just want to repeat what i said really to talk to paul into owned and to laura we did everything that we could to minimize suffering minimize or some life in this country as a result of the pandemic and i'm deeply sorry for every every every not every life lost. what i can say is that the government will continue to do everything we can to minimize life lost as as we go forward and. i continue to urge people as as as chris has just done the to follow that
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guidance and stay at home and protect the n.h.s. and saved lives. and that's the question you asked me i mean though the data. what we have now is a situation which is quite different to what we had in september and i think it's important that we recognise that new variant has changed the situation we're in very substantially the question about when to actually do particular measures it's always been a matter of trying to balance and i've said this repeatedly throughout this tragic pandemic balance these things which actually reduce the risk of transmission with all the other things we're trying to do in terms of society staying functioning over what has been a very long period of time enough unfortunately not one we're not through at the moment and that's something which political leaders have had to balance really difficult things the scientific evidence is clearly something which is one part of that and something which people have tried made it clear as possible in all the
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minutes of published and that's all very it's extremely clear what the evidence on that is but i would go back to saying the thing which we have which has made things very different in 2021 has been the problems of the new variant and that was not predictable in september there that is something we are trying to do something to address now and you know that's the reason we were worried 2 weeks ago that the measures we had at the moment were not enough to hold this new variant i think what the data i showed you at the beginning of the slide sessions shows is that the rates are just about holding with the new variant with what everybody's doing big worry how it was that that we need to hold it it's going to be much harder because it's new variant and i think we have to be realistic about that. what i'd say is 3 things 1st of all in terms of the on the lying causes of spread i think we defer to chris and to the epidemiologists but secondly the facts as we see it in that they saw that on christmas day we had 800000 coronavirus positive patients and now we've
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got just under 33000 but the 3rd point is that we've seen that growth rippling up from the side of the east london to the east of england and then up to the midlands which is consistent with the spread of the new variant of the virus thanks very much. in the prime minister in the days and weeks approaching a sad milestone have you spoken to the families bereaved by current virus do you bring them up privately your meet them and see them and if you haven't them why not and if i could also ask you any chest often skull of a given 500 pounds bonus in recognition of their hard work to the pen demick even little supermarkets has given itself a 200 times today why have an n.h.s. stuff an inch and a similar gesture supports and simon reduce like to see him get one thank you people here answer to your 1st question is yes of course i've talked to families of
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the of the bereaved and more continue to do so again i extend my of my my my my condolences to everybody who suffered a loss of a loved one during this pandemic and we do our absolute utmost to support i want to avoid n.h.s. staff and indeed had a 3 year pay package for the nurses that i think has dropped went 8 percent and will continue to invest record sums in the n.h.s. or the the amount we invested in the n.h.s. even before the pandemic began was more than the time in modern memory 34000000000 pound package of investment and that will continue under this government. i think what i would say is that having talked to many staff across the health service or busy day in day out actually what people probably want right now is 3 things 1st of all to be able to look forward to some sort of rest from what we're going to leave their press briefing their u.k.
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prime minister boris johnson and colleagues addressing the media after effect of the news that more than 100000 people in the u.k. have now died from covert 19 the prime minister said it's hard to compute the sorrow in that grim statistic but offered his deepest condolences to everyone who's lost a loved one he pledged that when we're through the crisis will come together to remember all those we lost when vaccines are free to us from the virus he said we'll make sure we learn the lessons and prepare until then we must work together with the resolve to defeat the disease and he emphasized serval times that his government did everything it could to minimize the loss of life let's go back to work out as it was andrew simmons who's in bradford in the north of england what do you make of what you heard there andrew. well the prime minister was expected to express his sadness his sorrow but this remark we did what we could is really going to get the spotlight so many people grieving as they see this figure this confirmation of the
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colossal number involved in deaths so the reality now becoming clear it's a people trying to visualize that figure of a 100000 for what you're seeing in this news conference what we've just seen the statistics been. explained and go into detail on a daily basis and in some ways suddenly it's all just because of that the numbers and of course that remark by patrick vallance back in march when he's march last year when he said that $200000.00 would be a good result will not only was that unfortunate phraseology offended so. people but it was miniscule compared with what's being faced now what we were hearing throughout that news conference was a referral to the new variants of coded the south african variant the one that was
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discovered in the u.k. and the brazilian war on this is blamed for what is very very high spike in the growth of the virus infection rates in the u.k. but aside from that there is the political issue with boris johnson's actions he was at least 2 to 3 weeks behind when kofi was heading into your appeals behind spain he was behind and then late so he disregarded scientific advice in september and didn't go into a fire break until much later 3 nearly 4 weeks at least 3 weeks later than people say should have done and of course the law be to keep the country going to lobby to keep that the hospitality industry for example the. whole host of of demands for bars johnson to get things back to near normal. sort of.
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