commercial spaceflight is now entering a new era by successfully reusing rockets and modules space 6 is making exploration economically viable later this year a mission will take for citizen astronauts into orbit the 1st mission of its kind in history. by me florida. another look at the top stories for you india has reported the world's highest daily tally of coronavirus infections for a 2nd straight day more than 332000 of them hospitals have critical shortages of beds medicine and oxygen more from elizabeth purana has in new delhi this is one of new delhi's biggest private hospitals where the director said 25 people died in one day because of low oxygen supply the family of

a 39 year old man who passed away says his oxygen was reduced without their knowledge and that his last words were please save me they also say they counted at least $45.00 bodies and that a catastrophe is being covered up the hospitals chairman says they've never had any deaths in one day but he denies there were a result of oxygen shortage in the u.s. regulators are lifting a pause on the use of johnson and johnson's single shot kovacs same this is after a recommendation from the centers for disease control and prevention it says the vaccines benefits outweigh the serious but small risk in the 8000000 people in the u.s. of received its health officials so far flooding 15 cases of blood clotting 3 of which were fatal. new zealand has paused its newly opened travel bubble with its neighbor after a covert 19 hour break in western australia the regions of perth and peele are entering a snap 3 day lockdown the zealand and australia had opened their quarantine free

travel bubble on sunday after closing their borders for over a year the search for a missing indonesian submarine is taking on added urgency as oxygen supplies on board are now calculated to run out it went missing with 53 people on board on weapons day jailed russian opposition leader alexei navalny is ending his hunger strike after 24 days novelli supporters and doctors had urged him to end the protests because of his deteriorating health and the british socialite elaine maxwell has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges involving the late finance jeffrey epstein maxwell appeared in a new york court in person for the 1st time since her arrest last july she is accused of procuring under-age girls for epstein to abuse. once again you're up to date with the headlines on al-jazeera the latest inside story is next.

already at all does the european union wants to sue astra zeneca the company is accused of failing to deliver the agreed numbers of covert one to crack scenes but will legal action work who benefits and how much of this is really about politics this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program i'm peter davi the e.u. is the biggest exporter of coronavirus vaccines anywhere in the world yet within

its own borders the rate of inoculation has been disappointing the world health organization is warning that could prolong the pandemic major member states such as germany france and italy are all struggling to cope with another wave of infections while vaccination campaigns continue to be hit by delivery delays now the european commission is reportedly weighing illegal action against the vaccine manufacturer astra zeneca the british swedish firm was contracted last september to deliver 180000000 doses to the e.u. by the 2nd quarter of this year but it slashed its deliveries by 2 thirds of what it's calling manufacturing issues and open occasions 2 of the bias this was reportedly discussed among e.u. ambassadors on weapons day when most of them said they would support suing this pharmacy. nicol giant but several countries including germany and france well they were raising concerns the european commission spokesman neither confirmed nor

denied the reports whatever steps are taken or would be taken decisions taken by any commission together with the member states as again this is a strategy that we implement together with the member states and so for condi to come into question we are only options which help us to ensure newsroom real stars a spokesman for astra zeneca says the company was not aware of any legal proceedings but it says it will continue regular discussions about supply with the european commission and e.u. member states we'll bring in our panel shortly but 1st let's take a closer look at inoculation campaigns across europe the e.u. is vaccine rollout has fared poorly compared to other developed economies only around 10 percent of the blocks $900000000.00 people have so far received a single dose of a vaccine but the situation changed this week with germany in the early doubling the pace of vaccinations following up to sit in supplies it's also decided to let

general practitioners administer the jabs france italy and spain are expected to follow that lead. ok let's bring in the panel from reading we have simon clague head of division of biomedical sciences and biomedical engineering at the university of reading in new delhi we have rajeev dust gupta chairperson of the center of social medicine and community health at joel howard on the university and in copenhagen we have jeff lazarus head of health systems at the barcelona institute for global health gentlemen welcome to you all jeff in copenhagen coming to you 1st what's to be gained here for the people of europe if the european commission goes to court. i'm not sure there's really much to gain i see this is a bit of a diversion from the real problem we have which is a lack of doses we need to focus on increasing production i don't know if the e.u.

is that going to recover funds left on the internet very phyllis's where astra zeneca vaccine is be supplied elsewhere if that's the case and i understand it but it doesn't make much sense i mean a pandemic isn't global epidemic and as long as the doses are be used that's the top priority the e.u. is producing the asters anika vaccine in very few countries so we need to look at where we can up the production capacity so i'm in clark in reading is this just political point scoring but it does seem to be a. critical point scoring yes i mean you have to ask yourself are. efforts to discredit the senate does that seem insensitive if if if the state safety why it's parts of europe is it came to get over it the germans for instance. looking to. tell you know what seem pretty they're going to the russians so it does seem

a bit all right it does cooper in delhi from where you are is this a particularly acute issue in as much as there are issues of procurement and procurement specifically in india because you are going through a vicious 2nd wave of coronavirus there. yes it's a quite led set of issues as fires india's vantage point goes the 1st is that beginning crew india expanded the vaccination program so those 45 years and above and then beginning me in a more recent recession it's open door than dolls and that's 18 years and above which has obviously led to an enormous increase in the demand for vaccines at that point india had only 2 axioms the astra zeneca went back to base aramis and the other one the vax vaccine went up to read about

a bag and only recently this what nic was given the are crazy asian to be imported initially what all this means is that there was a report as early as late march that in the interim government has decided that debate is not to be under court according to that report expanding the export of vaccines over the next couple of months and that's what we are essentially witnessing now it's also the case that this will affect the contribution to the cortex initiative of the w.h.o. which incidentally will end tate's 2nd year tomorrow jeff moving forward globally is at the nub of this debate whether it goes to court or not or whether it goes begins going through a legal system and then they all agree and then they get beyond that there's an issue here of contracts because coronavirus cove it manufacturing a vaccine that's here to stay procurement is here to stay as

a global issue moving forward in the continuing fight against coronavirus so whether the contracts were woolly or flawed is the central issue what was written into the contracts that the e.u. signed up to or was it that the head of procurement for the european commission who has his critics a lot of them didn't actually spot that the contracts weren't as good as they could have been. well given that you know the contacts are really been redacted and we haven't you know been able to read them in death i think the issue at hand is at astra zeneca probably over promised i mean leave the world has never been in a situation where we've had to produce so many vaccines so quickly so other companies have also probably over promised but they're vaccines aren't necessarily or haven't been approved yet so we don't know if they'll be able to deliver but astra zeneca promised a lot of vaccines more than that and more they could produce to 2 different

countries so i think there's you know probably some errors made on the part of the e.u. prop definitely some errors on the part of of astra zeneca but again the issue at hand is how do we increase the production and since the e.u.'s making such a large purchase you know what kind of oversight was there during the entire production process at the end of 2020 you know and in the early 2021 it wasn't until astra zeneca made it known that it wouldn't be able to deliver of the agreed upon contractually doses of the e.u. suddenly it reported that they were sending a team to look into the production for me that was too late and 4 months later we're still facing this production shortage and as you know was just mentioned countries like denmark and put up outright ban on astra zeneca last monday they reversed that country like spain is only using it for those aged $60.00 to $69.00

so on the one hand like simon said we're hearing that there's concerns in europe with asters anika even to the point of starting to discredit it to some extent and then we hear that we're going to possibly take legal proceedings due to you know failing to meet contractual obligations i think there's a disconnect there and i think it's a bit of a distraction so i don't clock in writing staying with that idea of somebody some place should have oversight would we not be in the situation. if everyone either astra zeneca and or the european commission had from the get go go on for complete 100 percent total transparency because you do one does get that sense doesn't on that as presented doesn't really like to talk it doesn't like to you know come down from its ivory tower and on the other hand the european commission doesn't really like to discuss its procurement process or its contractual process and that's why the u.k. has ended up 4 months ahead very quickly 4 months ahead of the rest of the european

union. yeah there is a lot of. smoke and mirrors around this it seems and people you're quite right ben might discuss what has been agreed jeff used the phrase we've got it for the contracts we don't we don't know what was promised or perhaps what was expected and reasonably are actually wrote from either party so until we get better window on the clearer view it's very very difficult for those of us we're watching commentary to read this and of course the general public to form an accurate view that it's almost impossible. really from both sides i think you've got a bit of a game creating a bit of p.r. manipulation going on and it's really very helpful much of diskeeper in delhi if jess lazarus in copenhagen has got this right and this is nothing more than a slightly sick big detour and politicians or bureaucrats passing the buck is that

something that you're aware of at ground 0 of a very bad 2nd wave the politicians they want to talk about what we're doing but they don't want to talk about what they haven't done or what they haven't achieved and they would always like to turn the the anglepoise lights of inquiry someplace else. you know when the depends where the politicians are looking for counsel are looking for corroboration the asters a nigger's one commentator had got it couple of weeks back had indeed become a sort of a political football and despite all this controversy is the stop start in some of the countries over the summer but this aspect of trying member of the event the fact is that the asters and it does remain the work cause for many countries including in its contribution to nichols 'd acts plus the demands the men just up there in india now as far as the indian domestic commitment goes it's only in the

last few days that the government of india has made an additional purchase order which is a sort of a commitment of $400000000.00 u.s. dollars work so will this elements of india and $200000000.00 to be added by a tick through to pre-book in a sense axioms for the next couple of months and that's certainly going to have a bearing on what its international commitments and delivery is on those commitments would be jeff lazarus in copenhagen how much of the buck should stop with the european commission president on the line in as much as she wasn't great according to her critics when she was percolating her way through german politics that's why angela merkel abstained on her appointment as european commission president and apparently reportedly it has been claimed in certain areas of the international media that the french president emmanuel macro actually quite liked

the idea of having a bit of a rubbish european commission president because he could kind of filter through her lack of traction as president his desired goal for the european union and then along comes coronavirus along comes covert 19. well i mean nobody benefits from the failings of the european commission obviously the president is ultimately responsible for everything that happens but she has a large team and while it's true we have been procured like this before and have been problems for a long time and making joint procurements a reality in the european union and then this is a large commission with with many experts. and we would have expected that there would have been over say during not just the contractual process not just the hundreds of millions of dollars investment invested in developing the vaccines but

also in in assuring the production's again i would just reiterate that we are where we are and we're facing a shortage and if the european commission sued and if it was resolved quickly in the courts and if it meant that more doses were provided to the e.u. and for example in a country like india and they were taken from a country like india i don't think that would anyone given their current state of affairs in the massive you know transmission. that's going on in india right now so not really sure what they're trying to achieve through the court case and again i would be investing the money in production states because we know that there are production sites that could be producing the vaccines in the that aren't being used and that's still for me a great mystery why we're not producing whether you know asters and it is axion or others i know that france is going to start producing the pfizer vaccine but i think there's still more capacity within the e.u. and elsewhere to to produce that axioms and i think it's in the interest of the

companies there's been lots of discussions around patents and patent liberalization and licensing but i mean no one's saying that we're not going to pay for the doses it's how to increase that production so i mean does this feed into the understandable anger and frauds because to the day 365 days off the lot. one in france france went into lockdown too and french people up and down france even in paris even slightly you know slightly left leaning labor supporting the for the french capital paris people were saying hang on we been here before we've been here frozen in aspic for a year and nothing has changed. yeah i think i don't know the french population our oh totally within their rights to complain that there hasn't been enough movement on this t.v. if they were to look over the channel and see how how quickly it's going to be here

they continue to do that i think though that there is always been a story reluctance to accept vaccines in france compared to what's been seen in other countries but it certainly doesn't help that people like my numerical 2 call caught the astra zeneca vaccine but was it a craze i mean effective there was a lot of silly. nationalistic politics bandied around and voters in france should ask themselves whether they were well served by that i would contend that they weren't rajiv descriptor in delhi we can't know for sure at the moment whether the european commission or various european leaders are learning the lessons here because of their relationship with a supra national organization such as the european commission but where you are what are the lessons that the politicians at federal level and the state level have

learnt so far particularly because they go into this wave to no. this is a very important question and india is actually grappling with this question now. the various states and particularly the high incidence states in this 2nd wave. in a contrarian position with the courts that the high courts of 6 states have actually taken a view on how how things are going and whether there should be logged on so there are completely contrarian views between the court and the state governments on lockdown decisions at the same time the supreme court also has stepped in taken solomon to cognizance and made a case that this is a national emergency the point therefore is that if if anything that that the lesson from the last year is and that's across the world that this does require

central planning this doesn't require require a whole lot of central core to nation but it also requires local leadership to be able to for those to play out on the ground and that coordination seems to be wavering in many parts of the world as as analysis come out. jeff lazarus in copenhagen and we also may be seeing a time or we're entering a period of time where european commission bureaucrats have to actually read the writing on the wall and be aware of what's happening in the world because one of the cove it pardon me one of the davos summits not the one just gone but the one before that cove it had hit wonder lion didn't talk about it the american delegation in davos did they said there is this pandemic coming people and we have got to deal with it and deal with it together but according to the european commission president oh she was in on the talk about it she gave a speech about libya and about a small mini migrant crisis on the border of the e.u.

with turkey and that was it has the time come for the european commission to start behaving like politicians instead of job for life bureaucrats. well there's are harsh words for it clearly europe and many other countries dropped the bar both in terms of pandemic preparedness over the last decade but also in terms of you know responding strongly to this pandemic we've seen a lack of collaboration around the world and also within the e.u. among the member states we've seen a lack of solidarity and when we see you know when we see mistakes being made we see that they're not being that defied very quickly said i think it is a it you know a it's a warning signal to the commission that the population expects and the more responsive more organized and globally that we're going to need probably some sort

of super organization in terms of pandemic preparedness and i think did a great job at the beginning in warning the world at that they continued they were and continue to be criticized for their role that w.h.o. informed the member states already in early january 2020 and it took a long time for e.u. member states and many other countries to respond simon clark does this also expose a certain hypocrisy on the part of the drugs companies astra zeneca we're talking about today and also the commission seems to me that what they should be doing is one fixing covert to fixing coded 3 fixing cove it instead of going to court primacy seems to be that the european commission is a bit ticked off because the contract wasn't what it should have been whereas if they fixed cove it they could then go on to help other countries such as india which are really heading into such a bad place right now. but i think this is really

a political question rather than one of the pharmaceutical companies it's not really a business question because they are producing at quite a rates as much vaccine as they possibly can you know conscious flip a switch these things but it takes months to produce these vaccines a batch of these vaccines they can just be churned out you know it may be the next few days so maybe there is only so much they can do they are invested in production facilities and of course you have to remember that they invested in this production facilities when they had no idea that any of these backseats actually work now 2 they would have taken some come for that from different governments so it seems really that they should have had. agreements in place as to what 3rd agreement as to what was going to be produced and where even when you've got agreements like that you have to accept that producing these things is

a biological process the things capitation to do go wrong so there needs to be some threats ability in ways that understand that really you can't always get what you want with these things and sometimes things go wrong so i think you need to be a bit more grown up on both sides about their expectations rajiv does this add to a preexisting narrative and i guess one wants to condemn bureaucrats and politicians because the takeaway for people who are living through coronavirus uncovered 19 is mismanagement misselling of a message and it's confusion and it's anger and this kind of legal process just fuels that even more. is that legal process may in the final analysis is big quite so go slow us but something that perhaps god gets overlooked in this context is this magical figure of 60 percent that provides an effective 60 percent

of the global vaccines a reasoned analysis points to the fact that while in the aggregate that may be true for childhood vaccines but as far as influenza in this group of vaccines is concerned india's contribution to the global pool in the market that is has been around 20 percent and therefore it begets the question that was it over estimated to begin with it in other words we had the as i'm since misplaced that's a question i suppose that requires deeper analysis very very briefly jeff last word to you 20 seconds how does the commission how do the politicians how to the drugs companies come out of this. they collaborate more defined a quick and effective resolution to the current situation the scale of production and the us to discuss how they're going to work together moving forward to end this pandemic and the pair future again thanks gentlemen we have to leave it there thank

you to our guests they were simon clark rajiv descriptor and jeff lazarus and thank you too for your company you can see the show again any time via the website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion goes well facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter handle is the inside story for me peter davi and the team here in doha thanks for watching we will see you very soon. i. thousands of children were removed from east timor during the indonesian occupation

decades later one to one of these joyous members of the last generation as they finally head home. on al-jazeera joggers in new delhi take advantage of the relatively clean air after weeks of toxic small stopped people from venturing outside institutions including hobgood say air pollution is leading to more severe cases of the coronavirus and more deaths from it and nowhere and in india the situation was fine you know for the dia the state's health experts and bob mentioned this and been warning for months that the easing of the lockdown would lead to an increase in who should and the impact that would have on those the core of the 19. i'm a like a vase in the south of india to find out how a tiny box in this cave brought an extensive mining operation to a standstill coronavirus how he wept across the world with devastating effect and it's widely believed to be connected to the legal wildlife trade here in vietnam we

did that a rescue center for some of the world's most threatened animal and joining the call for an end to the global wildlife slave earth rides on al-jazeera. president joe biden into the white house facing multiple crises including the coronavirus pandemic and it divided america 3 months on because he managed to follow through on campaign promises to fix the country stay with this perspective the coverage of biden's 1st $100.00 days in our own al-jazeera assoon as the sun goes down the shouting. russia is a very challenging place to work from as a journalist even don't you post here you can do it it's not allowed to build you share you're always pushing boundaries a lot of the time from moscow we can really love the people are being taken from peacefully march here just in time for we are the while traveling the extra mile where are the media don't go we go there and we give them

a chance to tell their story. 100 hours g.m.t. here on al-jazeera on come all santa maria and these are the headlines india has reported the world's highest daily tally of covered $9000.00 infections for a 2nd day in a row more than 332000 cases on friday hospitals have critical shortages of the basics beds medicine and oxygen and a fire killed at least 13.