site that's al jazeera dot com, more information on the latest updates all the corona virus, where the u. k. is announcing new restrictions to try and tackle the spreads. often you cove at variance to stay with us here in alta. 0 headlines are up next. ah, this is al jazeera and these are the headlines, the u. k. prime minister boris johnson, as announced stricter corona virus rules after 2 cases of the new only chron variance were identified, he said it appears to be more contagious and could evade vaccines. our scientists are learning more hour by hour and it does appear on the chrome spreads very rapidly and can be spread between people who are double vaccinated. there is also a very extensive mutation,

which means it diverges quite significantly from previous configurations of the virus. and as a result, it might at least import, reduce the protection of our vaccines. over time u. s. as among the latest country to impose a travel boncey, southern african countries, the white houses top medical adviser says the you the discovered only cron cove at variance. it's probably already in the united states, but stocks anthony folk, she says there is no reason to panic. south africa, foreign ministry has responded to the international travel ban, saying it's been treated differently than other countries that have discovered you . variance in industry has issued a statement saying it's being punished despite the countries quick detection off the variance. the u. s. as is greatly concerned about the escalation, conflicts in ethiopia and has called for urgent negotiations. if he'll be a prevalent sarabia herds has joined the army on the front lines against to growing

rebels from the north. he said his forces are making gains. sedans has reinstated prime minister abdullah humbug and has dismissed the chief or the put chief of police. and his deputy is comes a week out of town at general colored mat debra. he defended the conduct of the security forces after dozens of protested were killed. he came to police only use legal means to contain anti coo demonstrations for testers in burkina, faso are calling for the resignation of president rush, cut body. there's anger against worse than violence by armed groups. she burkina faso soldiers were killed during an attack on wednesday. isn't caberry has promised to and what he calls this function within the military. and those are the headlines . the syllabus here now to sierra inside story is next. ah,

the well faces, yet another covey 19 variants called only crohn health officials say it's more infectious than previous barriers. so how concerned should we be and our vaccination enough to contain it? this is the inside story. ah hello, welcome to the program. i am hush and i'll bala, just as the well, we're starting to show signs of recovery from the pandemic, and you covered 90 invariants called on the crown, has been identified. scientists say it's more infectious than the delta strain and

is unclear if the vaccines we have now will be effective against it. and while we're still don't know much about it, the global stock market price of oil and travel industry are already seeing its impact. many countries have banned or restricted flies from southern africa, whether new variant is believed to have emerged. with begin our discussion in a moment. first, this update from the media miller, johannesburg, frustration at janice birds international airport. as dozens of people try to return to the united kingdom, it comes hours after it was announced. a new variant of cove at 19 had been identified in south africa that led to the united kingdom announcing a new travel ban on people coming from southern african countries, looting south africa botswana and some bob with a bit inconvenience. we had our flight book for a week time,

but we got the news from our daughter in about 12 31 o'clock last night saying that you were going to introduce the red dress. it's on justified. it's abrupt and it's not good for tourism for south africa. with these regulations we've passed last night. people up front to keep trying to get back into the south african scientists say they're worried existing vaccines may not be effective. and the new variance may spread easily. genomics and south africa has been outstanding throughout this whole pandemic period. and that's why we've been able to identify when changes occur. the fact that we are able to identify changes quickly is good news is good news for the world. but we must be careful that we don't then jumped the conclusion of, well, that equals, it came from here,

it came from there. and it means that we need to understand much more about this. so far, dozens of infections have been identified in south africa. while in botswana, the government says the new virus was found in several foreign nationals on a diplomatic visit. while the south african government says it respects the decision taken by the u. k and other countries to limit travel to and from the region. and that precautionary measures may be necessary. it says the decision is rushed. the action of countries in terms of imposing and such measures are completely against the norms and standards. as guided by the wealth organization, a possible 4th wave, compounded by the new variant may further strain and already overwhelmed health system in south africa. lemetre miller, i'll just 0 janice, but ah,

let's bring in our gas in johannesburg, helen rees, chair of the world health organizations, regional immunization, technical advisory for africa, and member of the south african ministerial advisory committee for covey and covey vaccine. a last so u. k. julian tang clinical by raw just at the university of leicester and robert as the dean abraham director of med biotech and medical biotechnology laboratory. thank you all for joining us. helen. since the new variant army crohn was identified, it's panic and exile. anxiety globally. is it because of the mutations themselves or because this is an uncharted territory for the health community? well, i don't think it is an uncharted territory anymore. unfortunately, i think we've had quite a lot of these scares that the emergence of new variance, if we recall good thinking back to what happened in india. so it's not uncharted, but it is concerning. and we're going to have to do

a lot more research to really understand what this new variant it actually will mean both in terms of severity of disease, chance missed ability and the action of vaccines. and whether people can get reinfected. lots of questions to ask julian, the w h o labeled omicron as a variant of concern, which basically means is contagious or could be more virulent if it's both cases. what does it mean for the world? yes sir. the are the main concern is the of action escape capability of central capability. all those mutations include the 417484. so it's a 5, a watch increases transmit stability. so we are familiar with these types of mutations already. other variants include the original bt set up can be 1351 variance. and when asking how much more transmissible this to clear varied from bus

one or is that into the berlin? that's more tricky because a comparing relative amongst different populations that difficult because for example, in southern africa we have a high, you have a high rate of having t b endemic infections that may cause different levels of severity for clinical illness. come back to western countries where those 2 infections are not endemic. so comparison of balance would be very, very tricky going forward. as a dean, morocco joins, there are many countries imposing travel ban on south africa at this particular stage. give us a sense of what you think in, in morocco, i think about more screening, more restrictions or revisiting the whole issue of coven 19 inside morocco. well actually actually i think that we talked about this problem before and we thought that maybe if with something is not done to vaccinate at the rate a speedo rate actually answer gets a certain percent distribute vaccinate. so we have this huge risk, that's a virus or variance when we come in and would be coming back to square 0. and i

think when you were asking your question, we don't have a lot of fans. so the only thing that we know that this search warrant is in different places, actually, it's really interesting to see that a lot of people are pointing out to south africa. but i think the binge in cases are clear, may be the virus was and there, and maybe it was in other countries in more. okay. i think that is classical. now we know what to do is actually not lead the virus. get them quickly. actually in morocco we actually, the travel is really there is some restriction and actually we invite people to get maxine, i think the true thing that we are facing right now as the vaccination hesitancy. and i think if we don't get a certain percentage, we'll come back to square helen as the health given to you is trying to figure out and discover more about on the crone. so now what we know so far is this is very particular in the sense that it has a high number of mutations, particularly in its spike,

which is instrumental to the entry into the body. what does it mean for people all over the world when suddenly you have this variant with a huge number of mutations in its key protein? the spike? well, we don't yet know what it's going to mean, but clearly we are worried for the reasons you said that the spike is a very important part of the virus in terms of getting entry to cells. but the other problem is that a lot of the vaccines that we have were developed to recognize that spike protein, and that was from the original ancestral virus. so if that's a spike has changed significantly because of these mutations. the risk is that the vaccines that we have might be less effective and we are very much hoping they will be ineffective so far with the other variants such as emerged. we've seen that there, although we've seen a reduction in the effectiveness of vaccines, they still remained effective against severe disease and hospitalization,

which at the moment is this that the world's priority to tackle. but we're gonna have to watch that space to see how effective the vaccines are and that work has already begun. i mean that one is big. this is happening as we speak. and the vaccine manufacturers, particularly pfizer, which has this m r n a platform, is also already saying, well, if we have to change the vaccines, can we do this? and can we do this quickly? and the answer is yes, that technology has the ability to be changed rapidly and manufactured rapidly. so that's a sort of, if you like it, that's a bit of a good news story. should that be required? julian, the, the, the spike was the chief target of most of the pharmaceutical, or the vaccines that we stablish to, to contain a coven 19. and when you suddenly have this 30 mutations in this particular case of

our micron, could it be an indication if it turns to be really virulent that pharmaceutical companies will have to revisit the approach when it comes to tackling the this particular variant while having to have the transfer approach, i think make it be selective, but no, all of those mutations will need to be match. so new vaccine to give a sufficient cross reactive protection against the disease and death if the current vaccines originally devote to the warehouse or the virus, are doing quite well against the various variants because not cross reactive immunity that they confer. even though the vaccine does actually contain those mutations, so you might find a so called midpoint of you, like those of you to is required for the corporation of new vaccine to give up cross cross production. guess the, the only cron new variant, but also to retain protection against order variance like alpha term with delta. but we've seen already as it in morocco, suspended flies with germany, u. k. the netherlands, because of the surge of coven 19 cases in europe. back in july and august,

you had quite a remarkable search in cove with cases and also mortality rate. now, i guess the backdrop of this new development about omicron, do you have real concerns about a new wave in morocco that could be further exacerbated in case our micron crosses the borders? why have just to come back? actually, if you allow me to, to the vaccines record just to say that there is other vaccines that they have no targets in the spike protein. so for example, the single farm, the novel back some other vaccines that with targets in just the spike. and hopefully this got this vaccine under the secondary, she vaccines that would be really perfect. and the guest or kind of variance for, for more. okay. i think it's clear doesn't rule will not just by shutting the borders, the virus will not be then we, we saw that before what we are trying to do more gradually. it just will slow the speed by which the virus would it be coming. but i think what we have to do a just try to get a surveillance genomics or is, is very good to have in rockland,

they think what's happened this cases, we didn't see them because they started. i think when we saw the failure genetic off, the survey oriented started on march 2020. since the answer. and it's really did i by itself, we did move very in. so under surveillance, the genomics are, this is a problem, but i think we know this, if it's really around, the words would come to morocco. that's i think that portion of that and the hopefully we can fight as we did with on helen. we have only 24 percent of the population are fully vaccinated. and so there you have news about you identify this new variant. what does it mean for the, for, for the health system in south africa? well, it's very worrying and we were previously getting some, some comfort because we also have high rates of positivity, syria positivity, and our populations because we've had high levels of

a natural infection. so people have got antibodies, some from vaccines, but many from having a mild to moderate infection. that the question will be whether we're going to see re infection. and one of our concerns at the moment is that we are seeing re infections occurring with them. with this new variance, which means that the antibodies from a natural infection don't appear to be giving at least robust protection, they might get some protection, but not robust protection against the variant at the bottom line for, for the african region, is that we need to be able to vaccinate, we had huge delay because of access. we had huge delays because people were slow or countries the slow or to support the kovacs facility and put money in. so we didn't have the vaccines. we didn't have the funding at the beginning. now we've got them. one of the problems we've got is that we've got quite a lot of vaccine hesitancy in the region that people, on the one hand,

in many african countries, people are saying, well, we're not really seeing this disease. is this really affecting us? and so we go to a sort of complacency on the one hand. the other thing though with these delays is that a lot of misinformation was able to sort of go into populations justice, we've seen and parts of the world which is causing this vaccine hesitancy. but we really do have to get vaccination. i think most of us are still optimistic that the vaccines we have will give some level of protection even if it's partial protection, even if it's not as good against previous period. but we'll get some level vaccination coverage is absolutely critical. and so one of the things that we're going to have to, and we are talking about in south africa, a mandatory vaccination policies, as we've seen around the world. in the meantime, lilian, the one of the serious circulating now is that a micron must have a forced during a chronic infection of an immune compromised person, possibly suffering from, or being tree or of untreated is i v, a case. now,

if the body gets into that situation and then comes out, does it come out more aggressive? does it mean that vaccines will be less effective? does it mean that will likely to see more mortality re skyrocketing in the world? is that this is not unusual to happen. case reports of chronic infections like this be cubic developing similar mutations, physician and a different variance. now, this is quite rare, but when it does happen, there is a potential for these mutations to allow in hast responsibility and especially in a more severe disease. but also if you have too many mutations in the esper protein, which is the essential person to bind to the ac receptor, you make it an a loss of our fitness. and this has been discussed as well. so lots of our fitness means that the verse may replicate through several generations, but then start to fade out. and we've seen this before. there are several other barons like the that the proven variance n b to look in variance. and where actually those concern,

if i didn't really transmit much, young boost countries. and so we had another kind of a silver lining to this as then it seems like somehow we're having a replay or past scenario when the moment or delta was identified, countries spent loads of time energy of resources, putting restrictions screenings, and then it took them some time to share information with other countries to be able to cope with delta, delta dominated headlines all over the world for quite some time. could this be another case where we are directing our efforts towards that direction when we should be now in touch with health communities, but in those affected countries about to and that if i better know and deal with on a crohn why i think a, you had it on that? no, actually. so the thing is what we are looking for right now. we know how to deal with

that because we are thinking that the scenario will come back every time i had to be playing catch 22, but they bang the fact here and it's clear. we're not hard fighting, just the volume. think the, the worst case scenario, what's, why see, and in africa, because we were really lobbies, we didn't lot floppy isn't to get the vaccines to africa. and when you get the vaccine to africa and you see that people are hesitant and they are not vaccinating . and they think we are confronted with the misinformation. and i want to be really emotions or fear. but i think if we can not get to the people to get vaccinated, we'll see discuss 22 happening all the time. and maybe the worst case scenario when you get in a variance that will be spread and quickly given your worst disease. and we escape and the natural and they acquired immune immunity through vaccines. and here i think will come after squares, you know, ok. helen with, with, with less than 6 percent of the african communities fully vaccinated. you how

this new variant is it about time to review w edge recommendations, particularly when it comes to asking wealthy nations to share their stocks of vaccines where the poor nations to be able to cope what could be a nightmare scenario if on the cross, pres, globally, yes, i mean, i think that we, it's a funny kind of opportunity, but we must use that the, the current concern about this new very and to try and mobilize around vaccine coverage in the african region. and we had, in fact, a meeting yesterday of the original immunization committee for w h o m, and the, the vaccines are starting to come. but one of the problems we have is the capacity of countries to be able to absorb the vaccines both from the point of view of storage, but also from the point of view of delivery. many of these countries have very

remote areas and very difficult to reach areas. summer got conflicts and i would think that that, that in addition to looking hard and continue to support the supply of vaccines and the funding, what we really need to do is to work with these countries and put a lot more in to try and capacity than to be able to absorb and roll out those axes . those axes are no good enriches. they have to be administered. we're also worried because the people who are administering the coven vaccines and now not administering childhood vaccines. and we're seeing big outbreaks now. of things like yellow fever, we've had big outbreaks of measles, and we're seeing a decline in routine immunization coverage in some countries. so we might be trying to fix one problem, but we're creating in the medium term, a huge problem in terms of other vaccine preventables diseases. so my appeal to countries would be that we have to invest in supporting,

particularly the least while resource countries and was region to be able to roll as vaccines. julian, when pharmaceutical companies, pfizer astrazeneca mcdonough and of a vox say that the basically have plans in place to adopt the new variance. are they talking about a new dose? are you talking about a new model molecule make up of the dose itself? are they talking about a booster? are they talking about a new approach that could really take more effort, more time to be able to have a new vaccine that go, that will be able to cope with this particular variance? if it proves to be really aggressive? so those different vaccine approaches are not gonna change. what will happen is the change, the composition of the virus that dealing with. so for example, the amount of vaccines you can actually show them quite easily include an anti virus back to back scenes. that the subunit vaccines that are similar to the flu vaccine, like the modem of acts that it will trick you need to then incorporate those

mutations into the, the parent strain of the virus before you then that user confidence technologies to produce dots purified protein. the aspartame with those mutations, and then the whole virus vaccine, next created approaches like beaverton, eva, and the sign of act. you need to then get some of that, that all sworn be 11529 virus grew up in massive amounts and then you can actually a whole lot purify and then you put into the vaccine. and those take longer. the subunit vaccines, the whole aspect is to take longer to adjust the morning advisor to pack things up quicker, but you still need to increase in to scale. that can take several months as well. look at least 3 to 6 months lag time before we get inspections out on mass to the population against this new variable. as did you government should be now thinking about a contingency plans they've been promising people easing the restrictions now with our micron. as a scientist, would you recommend against a shut and you shut down,

particularly your main target? who may market? europe is witnessing a remarkable search in covey cases, from 700000 cases, a weeks or something like 2600000 cases. wow. why can she really nice to be a scientist rather than the decision maker? because i think it's a really heading to make a balance between all the economic advantages to communicate with europe. and on the other hand, the risk of having the virus coming here, the only thing that i'm really, i think the recommendation would be just a, we have to wait to just the weeks. and i think we have more questions now than answers and more ok that i think it's, it's stable situation right now. so what we are doing as measured right now, we prevents at least 2 or 3 weeks to have a really, a virus spread in morocco, hopefully by then we go get all the answers to this question. all right, helen,

this is a pandemic that claimed the lives of more than 5000000 people and many thought that finally there was light at the end of tunnel. sadly, with this new report about on the crime, people have this sense that this is back to square one. we're just back to the 1st days of cove it for fear. do you share that sentiment or do you think this is something which has been a little bit exaggerated? well, i think it hasn't been completely well handled in some quarters. i think that we've seen even scientists use quite scare mongering language and certainly the media is doing that. or the other thing that we're seeing is the, the sort of turning countries into prior states. instead of saying, actually this is very good science. this is exactly what we want the world to do is to do good science and to release that science quickly so that we can respond and

not stigmatize the countries that are actually doing what w h o and the member states, the w h. i have all us to do, which is be honest and transparent with data. so, you know, i don't feel that we're necessarily back to square when we were ret, we've learned a huge amount in the nearly 2 years that we've been at this. we've got new technologies, we can, as we've just heard adjust those technologies, we're able to do 0 surveys and we are starting to get vaccine coverage. um, i mean, if we could really, really push that fax in coverage. and i know from this region, we've said this to the whole world repeatedly, you know, you can't leave one continent out. this is not the kind of ours that will sit quietly where you want to leave it, even if you orders. if this is transmissible, it will spread. thank you. hadn't breeze julian tongue? i said, you know, i me, i really appreciate your insight. thank you. thank you for watching. you can see

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conflicts in ethiopia, while foreign minister abbey afterwards is on the front line.