and in september's election, she stayed on his chancellor until furnishing talks confirmed on a shots as their successor is expected to take office next week. and a great one, you can catch up any time with our website address that is andrew 0 dot com. and you watch a slide by clicking on the black live icon ah . top stories on angie's era. yes, president joe biden has unveiled new actions to combat code 19. as the emergence of the army cron variant increases, the urgency he said, for booster vaccines. arden's plan includes tied to restrictions for international travelers and expanding access to at home testing. run a fight is variance with science and speed. not chaos and confusion to us like we beat back over 19 in the spring and more powerful version deliver in the summer and

fall as result. we enter this winter from a position of strength compared to where america was last winter. and last christmas, you're in a one percent of american adults were fully vaccinated. this christmas, that number will be 7772 percent, including more than 86 percent of seniors. most all population germany has announced it will ban unvaccinated people from much of public life. in a bid to stop a 4th wave of infections, those who are not to fully jabbed or recovered from code 19 will only be allowed in essential shops such as grocery stores and pharmacies, chancellor angle americas as a proposed vaccination mandate could also take effect as early as february, health officials in south africa was the new current of ours variant omicron is driving a sharp increase in infections with more than 11 and a half 1000 daddy cases detected. it's become a dominant across south africa,

which was the 1st country to report on a highly mutated strains. the united states top diplomat has held talks with his russian counterpart to try to diffuse mounting tensions over ukraine. 50 state and lincoln and foreign minister, a lover of disgust. russia's trip build up near the border. a meeting in the swedish capital stock home earlier in the day. but i can also spoke to ukraine's foreign minister. never off reject claims. russia is planning an attack on ukraine . iran has submitted to draft proposals to european powers, working to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. officials meeting in vienna attempting to bring both iran and the us back into the agreement. names to limit around your activity in exchange for sanctions. rafe. the top stories to stay with us longer there at the stream is up next. i'll be back with one year off to that. ah,

ah ah . ah. hello, i'm semi ok. it has been just over a week since we discovered a new corona virus ferret cord, alma crohn. he is what we know so far. let's take a look at a timeline. first discovered november the 24th by south african scientists. 2 days later, the w h o designates omicron as a variant of concern, bringing you right up to date. where are we now? where we have confirm cases in at least 30 countries say to day on the stream, omicron and vaccine inequity? what is the connection between vest variant and some countries not having vaccines

to distribute to their citizens to day stream? ah. oh, you have so many experts for your daughter sonya. welcome, dr. regina welcome, agile. welcome. good to have you all on the stream though to some you will you introduce yourself to our stream audience? tell them who you are, what you do? i'm so minutes. why me not them if you did, you should by training from india. and i currently serve as the chief scientist because scientists actually off the world health organization is really good to have here though, to regina, welcome back to the street. please remind our audience. hey, you all what you do? yes, i am regina was c. m an infectious disease specialist, and i work at the art institute in south africa as the chief global health officer . and i always get to see a child when to call him a child. i told you so as he's been following this journey of the pandemic since

the very beginning with us on the string match, although officially introduce yourself to restroom audience. go ahead. lovely to see for me i work as a public health activist against pharmaceutical monopolies. i've been doing it for 20 years and i will do it from africa. i'm taking everybody. i want to tell you that as we're talking about on mechanics and new varied, we've only known about it for about a week. what questions do you have? what concerns do you have? come at sections right here. i will do my best to bring your comments, your consent to al, guess some guy, let's start with you. what do we know about on the call in the week that we've known about it? what have we learned? thank you for me. at this point, i think there are more unknowns in unknowns, but what we do know protocol thanks to the south african scientists and doctors and research just with big data. in fact or time. i mean, i think the 1st cases that was seen when on the 9th or 10th of november,

and by the 24th, the already had several whole genome sequences. and had found out that this was a new gradient which looked very different from any of the previous variants, very different from delta of any to through 5 b and the all that's why the papers went in and start investigating because they found a group of people in an education institution that had been infected, what we learned in the last few days is that it does seem to be growing rather rapidly. south africa is reporting a dumpling of cases every other day. at the, at the moment a lot of these cases of might infections what hospital admissions are going up. so it looks like this variant is quite transmissible, whether it's more transmissible than delta or not, needs to be conformed or can take

a few more days for us to study that. and of course, we know that it's already in every continent in more than 30 countries. and i think it's a question of time when countries start doing the genome sequencing and looking, they'll find more at this time. we really do a lot about its effects, whether it's different from the previous variance and we also don't know about whether it can overcome in units of the sam. yeah, what we do know is about the reaction. we're very k on the reaction. i want to bring in a new voice into our conversation. this is vicky bally vicky bally has, has some thoughts about how the world reacted to this new variant at regina went to pick right off the back of the keith comments his yes know these statements and i think that really ties about current of ours and to the vaccines, especially with the emerging of all these different barriers for previous parents,

and hopefully this current very nice the nature of people, even though they might get break to patients that are very miles in patients as a much shorter. so there's a much shorter time period for the fires actually mutate. so it's more people gave vaccination and it should reduce transmission. but even if there are the breeze in patients, it was full generation as mean of the variance coming out. yes, i think that's, you know, the reaction in the world was quite disappointing in terms of how we approached it . i think that we are 2 years down the road with this pandemic. and that we've learned many, many things in those 2 years that we need to start applying. and i think one of them is that the tools we have now, i'm not the tools we had in march 2020. i think we have many more, you know, sophisticated tests, we've got vaccines, we've got a whole bunch of things that we can use. and we need to be using every tool in our

arsenal to be able to really get ahead of the pad that make. and i think going back to sort of the jerk reactions, in terms of closing down borders and figuring out whether people are allowed to travel or not allowed to travel. and sort of going back to sort of the, the early days of the pandemic. i really think does not help anyone, and i think we need to start looking critically at what we've learned in the last 2 years. and what we can all do to really apply the science that we've learned and we need to push vaccines. we need to make sure that everybody's vaccinated, but i think no, as vicki said, nobody is safe. and if everybody is safe and it's not everybody for themselves, i think we just have to be a little bit more out of have a view to solidarity and have a view to the fact that, you know, so far as we don't deal with the pandemic in all of the countries in the world, the other countries, the western countries of the global north is also not going to be safe. i want to play to use the south african president. so rama poses. this was on november the

28th. he basically calls out countries that immediately put a ban in place for south africans traveling. some was stuck somewhere all over the place and they couldn't get on the plane. they were stuck on the tarmac. this was an instant reaction to very at that as though to some ja says we don't even have enough information yet, but yet people, what bad here is the south african president? now these restrictions are corblu unjustified. an unfairly discriminate against our country and our southern african sister countries. the prohibition of travel is not informed by science, nor will it be effective in preventing the spread of this variant. the only thing the prohibition on travel will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine the ability to respond to and also to recover from

the panoramic. i remember any last year, it was an april president. i'll pull that along with a few other words. he does find a declaration of 150 people on it for people vaccine. i was one of the signatories . my wife said it was well leaders and me meeting. i didn't do that to be there, which is true, but i remember most strikingly, i think that this is now one and a half years. since people want to vaccine equity, you know, we're living in the aftermath of not having vaccine equity. the thing that frightens me about the very end, and the reaction to it is what you're seeing is that seen an equity deepen in 2 ways. the one is that you've seen across western countries, high income rich countries. that's just the plain language. increasing authorization, the booster shots, an encouragement to recommendation to get one in poor countries. renewed urgency to

get back to me to it. and both these photos together create an increasing pressure on having even more vaccines than we thought we needed. when we went into the bank, i mean, last year or at the beginning of this year, and vaccines came out. and so what we're seeing, i think, as an effect of the convey and if the existing vaccine in equity being further deep . and if you were to those behind and you live in that area. now, prieto's is behind the news from the photos is behind. many countries who have limited vaccine supplies like india, without africa look really have the kind of food supplies for boosters every 6 months. in the way that some of the recommendations exist today. and my concern really is on these tens of billions of actually going to come from because they don't exist today. i'm not so april 2020, most of the time when the w 2 decided to set up, go back along with gabby and set b and many other global institutions with

a view to an end to end approach support r and b of new vaccines and show that there was procurement and equitable distribution across the world to all countries. to 1st got the most vulnerable populations in each country before we start skating up and that we're able to reduce mark out if only that black work. and it didn't work because it was 41 back season was ordering vaccines and need a manufacturers, not the countries with the manufacturing capacity within their borders. cooperated with this global plan and, and as i agreed that we had a very dangerous moment now when the band is clearly just on the wrong foot, start all over again. this audio vaccines and, and not sharing and who likes to be delivered about 600000000 vaccines. we had hoped to be about $2000000.00 off back seen out the door by the end of the year. but that hasn't happened due to all of these other factors. i have heard some

horrific stuff of holding regina. i'm going to get you to jump in because i want you to share some of those stories because people will be shocked at what's going on behind the scenes. for instance, a country like botswana has a delivery of vaccines about to get to them. somebody else in a richer part of the world beats higher. and then those vaccines get taken away from the country that paid higher amount po vaccine than they were originally being paid for, say in the global north. that is one story. but you know, when you show a couple more people understand what vaccine inequity really looks like before we do that, let me just show you a couple of key points and key stats so that your jaws will drop around the well, as you see this, not i guess but you've, you us 54.6 percent of the well population received at least one dose of cove at 19 vaccine. 8.0. 7000000000 doses have been administered below valley.

oh, nice 6 percent of people. low income countries have received at least one dose. we are so far behind regina tell us a horace story that you've heard. now, i think you know, you can stop the clearly plainly available if you go and google it, you'll find all this information everywhere. there are countries rather than 220 doses by a 100 people sort of available and administered. and there countries where there's been one those for 100 people. and so, you know, it is really a massive and very stock inequity. i think dr. assume you started talking about a little bit about the callbacks mechanism and why that didn't work and people didn't participate. what happens is that people will order, you know that the, it's about purchasing power. it's about amounts of money, of manufacturing capacity supply. and i think that what we have to be really careful about is as well as that distorting is going on with the vaccines. but

we're just about to get to potentially game changing anti virals that are coming down the pipeline to try to help, you know, stop the progression of mild, moderate, covered to severe cove. it in people with risk factors. and i think that we're going to have a risk of that same thing happening with these antivirals that are being produced. first of all, the manufacturing capacity is not there to take care of everybody. so it's going to go to people who can, you know, have better negotiations, have better purchasing power, the poor procurement that is happening sort of through different global mechanisms . people are just not really playing fair with that either. and so it's going to end up in a situation where on top of been vaccinated, people in the global well have access to very cutting edge therapeutics that people who are on vaccinated and therefore higher risk of dying and having severe disease from covered will not have access to and i think it's just going to perpetrate this

inequity that is already really quite stock. i have so many questions for you on you chief guess i'm going to file a couple at you. we're going to do this as a rapid fire round, because then we're going to get to what you feel we should be doing now as an international community. couple of questions for you very quickly. i'm gonna ask you a moses. so i'm going to put this one to you most is, wants to know, do an existing vaccines work on amazon or existing vaccines work against all of the other variants. and, you know, we have to remind ourselves, it's a dental variant globally, today that's counting for 99 cent infections. and vaccines prevents, of your disease hospitalizations and death be modified the disease. they don't anti prevent infections. we, we think that these vaccines will still work best for me. brown and other variants because they elicit a very broad immune response in the body. is that going to be reduced? are not both experiments in progress,

but we do think they will have some protection and back be being vaccinated would be better than not, not having the vaccine. and all the question moses must shoot, has a question of a gene. i'm going to put this one to you. what would be the scientific solution for constantly mutating virus? oh, that's a complicated one. i think the scientists have been as sort of doing their heads and with that as well. i think the idea is to find you know, therapeutics that are, that are widely neutralized, neutralizing so antivirals, or actually vaccines that are actually going to be able to deal with several sort of are working against the epi tops or the areas that are common across many different viruses, so you would have less concern in terms of, you know, mutation of the spike protein, but it's kind of natural in terms of the scientific basis. but once you have something that works,

the viruses that are not affected by that thing tend to then propagates. and so the real scientific solution is to get everybody vaccinated, reduce transmission, reduce the amount of disease that's for collating. and so you get to the point where you don't actually have enough spiral replication to be able to transmit. you turn to viruses. so it is a multi factorial thing. it's not going to be just one silver bullets. but, you know, i think people are working on all fronts of, i guess, tech lighting on youtube as well. this one from oven ash kupta aviana shanda. i'm going to put this to you, agile. i like the muddle from indian airports where they have passengers with a negative test before departure. and these passengers attested again on a rifle, irrespective of the test status. could that be the future for all of us for all travel drink pandemic? you know, one of the things that's really arbitrary about the capital band that they're not implementing good testing in order to be able to have people move at they need to

without being inconvenienced by these arbitrary bands. but can i just say that i think what it leads to is this idea, especially in southern africa, but also in western and eastern africa, parts of central africa. that the countries who have had the least amount of access to vaccines in the anti up and make among the countries were being punished the most for then supposedly perhaps originating oh, detecting a variant in the region. and i think that part of it is something we need to be really concerned about. regina talked about anti virus builds from luck and provide the much less well, it turns out than we thought it would defy the bill. we hope might work as well as the say it will. these bill actually have much better access provisions than vaccine. so between $95.00 in $105.00 countries around the world, many low income countries, including in south africa, we have access to these through an arrangement with the medicine space. and because

these companies have allowed, in the reason the same company, for instance, like fighter, if not doing the same thing for its vaccine, which is good feasibly also due to other companies to have the manufacture them at the same time is because they have a monopoly control over the vaccines beyond the intellectual property that there is no longer both in countries or otherwise that can get them to part with it. and so the understand that, and they're keeping the vaccine technologies close disallowing in many is the just food production of the fact that we could have which to the extent that they happen would, would remove the unnecessary and ridiculous barriers that i would try to travel bad like the one that would experiencing a cause, i have a frustration in your voice actual it is an, as an all calm variant with, with such a speedy ability to transmit corona virus. as far as we know right now,

is that, is that the tipping point is that when we just say okay, we need to work together. we need to pull either. are we at that point yet? cuz i don't want to, yes. i find it really oh, you know, sometimes ridiculous. i know you don't mean it that way when people use the word dipping by either to bangalore in april and me, andrew. yeah, yeah. officially, 4500 people are dying and june unofficially, anywhere between 2 and 5 times that number dying. and it was that not a tipping point. you know, it was the brazilian very and that was a proliferating in dance like my mouse and a freaking destruction. that was that on the tipping point, you know, was the you k very and tried to vaccinations even being a brought to market? was that not a tipping point? i mean this has been tipping point upon tipping point upon tipping point. right. and so for if you want to think that now is the time to rec, i'm very sorry, but the day to wake up was exactly in march 2020. when the ws are declared, the pandemic officially exist. i so washington,

i'm calling this gangster science regina. i know it's not called gang society, it's um, reverse engineering. okay. so you take the vaccine and then you work out how it was put together and then you make your own vaccine. a. this is karen fanta asked for after jen, who is doing this science in south africa, maybe if we're able to do reverse engineering in the developing world, we're not going to be quite so reliant on what happens from the rich. well, he says there's a lot that we've learned in the pandemic in it, and it's highlighted just the inequities backs at best exhaust and, but it's also given such a driving force to say am for african say, no, we can do a slack me. there's major emerging economies of the growing continents and we can do it. gina?

yes, i mean, i think she's right. yes, we can do it. but the question is, how much time do we have, right. and i think that, you know, a lot of the development that was done by a brown tech pfizer and all of the big and madonna in terms of the vaccine, was also funded through some public funds. people have stood in line to sort of pay for vaccine, but even then we're still not able to get them and, you know, yeah, why would we have to then reverse engineer when they are tech transfer provisions that can be had that's going to take an inordinate amount of time and resources when the actual technology already exists has been elaborated. and then it's just being held basically hostage so that we have to then do everything from scratch. and i think that, you know, it's also not even as if we're asking for something that is, you know, proprietary in the terms that, you know, it's not really for the common good, but everybody in the world is going to keep suffering from the cover panoramic. if we do not get vaccine everybody and get everybody vaccinated and released the

thought sharing that technology, and so the logic of back for sort of really defies me a little bit earlier on the train. we spoke to that. so i'm going to come right to you and see what you don't to hush a summary. she is a public health medicine specialist and her message to our school as we need to be more sophisticated about how we're dealing with the pandemic, dr. sammy, as soon as she's finished, i would love to hear what you feel your message from the w h o as chief scientist should be to us as intellectual viewers watching right now. here is hot summer festival. in december 2021 as opposed to 2 years ago. travel benz interest wants to a newly detected cobra, 900 variant ah, scientifically, christabel, and quite new. i certainly could read that governments need to do all that. they came to prevent the entry of new places and billions into the countries. and this can be achieved by mandating various public health measures,

including ensuring that travel is up vaccinated, that they produce a negative call the 1900 test prior to departure. that the screening and mos waiting for the duration of trouble and that quarantine is instituted at the destination country. go to some, you know, what semester she want to leave us with as a chief scientist at the w h o. what we've done to the last few years to me is that sign for d and reduce the vaccines and one of the antibodies, the drugs, the diagnostics, but there was no sort of attitude that was on mobile collaboration. and vaccines and other products which seem like, you know, we've lost a level 5000000 people, those are just the known cases, a number of much, much higher than that. these are gilbert public goods. and as regina said, many of the early research that goes into the development of these products is

funded by government. taxpayer money that goes into that research and later on it's acquired by companies that then produce of vaccines and drugs. and we need to model a new model, and i hope that the pandemic treaty that's now being negotiated by the member states of the one organization will take this opportunity to put in place mechanisms process as god trans, at least for the future, for future generations. if there's a fam demik again, that we need to develop products, we just then equitably distributed. and so this plan to make, we've started work with this technology transfer, how to mention the one in south africa, which is trying to build capacity to make em out in the vaccines and to train d. i some other thought to some you for bringing your wisdom. you'll insight to us on the screen dr. regina. thank you as well. and actually, it's always a pleasure having you, i mean, even here on my laptop with a w. h o,

a home page here. and you can see all of the information about the corona virus, coven, 19 pandemic, including the new variant. thanks for watching everybody. i see you next time. ah december 4th, we'll see guntee of all the countries most significant election. so it's been 5 years since the former long term leda jamita printed to we are, raymond, was brought on. antonia what political divisions roommate can become me, a believer on its prost, democratic position, commercial coverage on al jazeera, a gynecologist working as a volunteer in areas of conflict, is not only

a skillful doctor, but he's also known for his time delivering babies and treated women who medical services are limited. you're truly a doctor of humanity and hope out as the world. what was the doctor, medical mission? it syria, him and, and southern turkey. doctor report on out to 0. you know, you can watch out to say we're english streaming live on like youtube channel plus thousands of all programs award winning documentaries and in depth news reports. subscribe to you to dot com. forward slash al jazeera english african stories of resilience and parish. i get younger a tradition and dedication a short

documentary by african film, make it on the white 9 and the book make it africa direct on al jazeera. ah, i know i learned taylor in under the top stories on out there. he was president joe biden is unveiled new actions to combat cove 19 saying the emergence of the omicron variant increases. the urgency for booster vaccines. arden's plan also includes tighter restrictions for international travelers and expanding access to at home testing. run a fight is variance with science and speed, not chaos and confusion just like we beat back over 19 in the spring and more powerful version delivery in the summer and fall as.