this is this, it group say is a manufactured crisis, resulting from greece's lack of integration policy for refugees. all of them are extreme arisia, the resource or, and they're not there, then they just need some more real support. and the plan that we look at their needs from reception point to gratian and then that will just be for us. and not the burden greece says it is merely implementing the law supporting those deemed in need of protection and asking every one else to go away, but they have nowhere to go. jobs are hopeless at the malak asa under that solar refugee camps. ah, and let's thank you through the headlines here in al jazeera. now, south africa's health minister says his country can manage the 4th wave of cove. it 19 infections without imposing tougher restrictions, more than 11 and

a half 1000 cases. fuel by ami kron variance have been confirmed in a day. president joe biden has announced tied to restrictions for international travelers. the u. s. is reported on me crohn in 5 states, including one person in hawaii who had no history of travel. we're going to fight this variance with science and speed, not chaos and confusion. just like we beat back over 19 in the spring and more powerful, very, and 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 for fully vaccinated this christmas. that number will be 7772 percent, including more than 86 percent of seniors, the most vulnerable population, south careers making it mandatory for people to show a vaccine piles to enter public spaces including cafes and restaurants. the measure

has up to now only applied to venues considered high risk. like jims, south korea is ramping up restrictions after confirming 5 cases of the army, kron variant germany plans to ban unvaccinated people from most public places. outgoing chance wrangler merkel announced the measure. and so parliament will debate making vaccines mandatory by february ukraine's defense minister is warned of a large scale escalation from russia. military build ups by russian troops near the ukrainian borders raised concert concerns it could attack its neighbour, bureau secretary of state says he's concerned about aggressive russian policy. it's the stream. now. we understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the world. so no matter what you see out is all right,

we'll bring you the news and current affairs that matter to you. how does europe? ah, hello, i'm sammy ok. it has been just over a week since we discovered a new corona virus ferret cord on a cron. 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 this variance and some countries not having vaccines

to distribute to their citizens to day stream? ah. oh, we have so many experts for you, dr. sonya. welcome, dr. regina welcome, agile. welcome. good to have you all on the stream though to sonya will you introduce yourself to our stream audience? tell them who you are, what you do? i'm so ms. my me not. and i'm a pediatrician by training from india. and i currently serve as the chief scientist, the 1st few scientists actually off the world health organization is really good to have you data regina. welcome back to the stream, closing on 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 want to put in a child. i told you so as his me following this journey of the pandemic since the

very beginning with us on the string match, although officially introduce yourself to our stream audience. go ahead. lovely to see if any. i'm actually brother. i work as a public health activist against pharmaceuticals, monopolies. i've been doing it for 20 years and i will be in india. i'll africa and brazil. let's see everybody. i won't say tell you that as we're talking about or 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 concerns to our guess somewhere. let's start with you. what do we know about on the con 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 good to go, thanks to the south african scientists and doctors and researchers. we picked it up . in fact, more time. i mean, i think the 1st cases that was seen were on the 9th or 10th of november,

and by the 24th the already had several genome sequences. and had found out that this was a new betty and which looked very different from any of the previous variants, very different from delta of any to through from alpha beta. and that's why it was mentioned in sort of investigating, because they found a good 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 rapidly. south africa is reporting a doubling of cases every other day. at the moment, a lot of these cases are, might infections, but hospital admissions are going up. so it looks like this variant is quite transmissible, whether it's more transmissible than dent or not, needs to be confirmed 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 diamond countries start doing that. genome sequencing and looking they find mall at this time. we really do a lot about it is a fact whether it's different from the previous variance and we also don't know about whether it can overcome in unit design. 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 some thoughts about how the well reacted to this new variant. regina went to pick right off the back of the keys, comments his yes, know, be safe until or sex. and i think that really, at times when we talk about our current of ours and access to the vaccines, especially with the emerging of all these different parents, as i know for previous parents and hopefully this current billing and as vaccinated

people, even though they might get break from patients that are very mild, a much shorter time period for the bad fires actually mutate. so if more people get vaccinated and they should, it should reduce transmission. but even if there are these breaking things, it won't allow for january to have as many of these variants 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 pandemic. and i think going back to sort of the jerk reactions, in terms of closing down orders and figuring out whether people are allowed to travel or not allowed to travel. and sort of going back to sort of 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 is vaccinated. but i think no, as vickie said, nobody is safe from everybody's safe. and it's not everybody for themselves. i think we just have to be a little bit more. i 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 a global north is also not going to be safe. i want to play to use the south african president. so around the poser, 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 vary it that as built 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, arg, corblu, unjustified, and unfairly discriminate against our country and our southern african system 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 pandemic. i remember if any last year it was an

april president. i'll pull that along with a few other one to find a declaration. 150 people on it for people vaccine. i was one of the signatories. my wife said it was well leaders and me me think 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. and now 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 actually in an equity deep. and in 2 ways, the one is that you've seen across western countries, high income rich countries, that's just the plain language increasing authorizations a booster shots, an encouragement 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 band last year or at the beginning of this year when 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 deeper 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 vaccines applied like india with africa booth really have the kind of food supplies for boosted 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 roach, support r and b of new vaccines and show that there was procurement and equitable distribution across the world to all the countries to 1st of the most vulnerable populations in each country before we start skating up and that we put a reduced mark on only that black work. and it didn't work because it was 41 axis, it was ordering axis and need a manufacturers northern countries with the manufacturing capacity within their borders. cooperated with this gilbert flat and, and, and i agreed that we had a very dangerous moment. now, when the bank clearly just only cranford, start all over again. this or the most back scenes, and not sharing and likes to be deliberate about 600000000 vaccines. we had hoped to be at 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 amounts 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 view us 54.6 percent of the well population received that needs 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 this, that's the clarity, plainly available. if you go and google it, you'll find all this information everywhere. there are countries rather than $220.00 per 100 people sort of available and administered. and there countries where there's been one, those 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, 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 put potentially game changing anti viral 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 but same thing happening with these anti virus 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 neg negotiations, have better purchasing power at 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 being 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 the 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 going to ask you a moses. so i'm going to put this one to you mostly wants to know, do 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. for 99 percent of infections, and vaccines prevents severe disease hospitalizations and death. we modify the disease, they don't and die infections. we, we think that these vaccines will still work best for me. grandmother variance because they elicit a very broad immune response in the body. is that going to be reduced or not both experiments in progress,

but we do think they will have some protection and back being vaccinated would be better than not, not having the vaccine at all. it question moses my shoot has a question regina, i'm going to put this one to you. what would be the scientific solution for constantly new tating virus? oh, that's a complicated one. i think the scientists have been as sort of doing their heads in 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 tomato ing. and so you get to the point where you don't actually have enough spiral replication to be able to transmit a mutant 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, lots of ideas circulating on youtube as well. this one from aven ash kupta. i'm gonna share a, i'm going to put this to you. i shall. 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 ging up pandemic? you know, one of the things that's really arbitrary about the capital bands that they're not implementing good testing in order to be able to have people move that 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 vaccine in the anti up and among the countries were being punished the most for then supposedly perhaps, origin aging oh, detecting of area and 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 bills actually have much better access provisions than vaccine. so between $95.00 and a $105.00 countries around the world, many low income countries, including and africa, will have access to these through and 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 it could 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 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 ways. but just food production of the fact that we could have which to the extent that they happen would, would remove the unnecessary and ridiculous barrier that arbitrary job of travel bad like the one that we're experiencing. 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? cause it so yes, i find it really oh, you know, it sounds ridiculous. i know you don't mean it that way when people use the word to be buying ident through 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 variant that was a proliferating in dance, like my mouse and a drinking destruction. that was that on the tipping point, you know, was the you k very and prior 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 time to wake up was exactly in march 2020. when the ws are declared, the pandemic officially exist. i so i sure do. i'm calling this gangster science

regina. i know it's not called gang society. it's of reverse engineering. ok. so you take the vaccine and then you work out how it was put together and then you make your own vaccine. 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 on it and it's highlighted just the iniquities backs that exist. but it's also given such a driving force to say am for african say no, we can do it like me. and there's major emerging economies. it's a growing continent 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 rights? 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 medina in terms of the vaccine, was also funded through some public funds. people have stood in line to sort of pay for vaccines, but even then we're still not able to get them. and you know, yes, why would we have to then reverse engineer when they're 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 ad then is just being housed basically hostage, so that we have to then do everything from scratch. and i think back, 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 covered pandemic. if we do not get vaccines buddy and get everybody vaccinated and really sweet spot

sharing that technology. and so the logic of that, so sort of really defies me a little bit earlier on the dream we spoke to that, something i'm gonna come right to you. i don't see we spoke to dr. hoshal summary. she is a public health medicine specialist and her message to all schools. we need to be more sophisticated about how we're dealing with the pandemic belt to some. yeah. as soon as she's finished, i would love to hear what you feel you will message from the w h o l t scientists ship b to us as international viewers watching right now. hey, is how to summarize festival? in december 2021 as opposed to 2 years ago, chavel bands and just wants to a newly detected cove. 19 variant are scientifically christabel and quite naive. i certainly agree that governments me to do all that they can to prevent the injury of new cases and variance into the countries. and this can be achieved by mandating various public health measures,

including ensuring that travelers approximated that they produce a negative coven 19 test. prior to departure that the screening and mosque wearing for the duration of travel and that quarantine is instituted at the destination country. got to some your what semester he want to leave us with as a chief scientist at the w h o. what are you gms out over the last few years to me is that science for d and produce the vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, the drugs, the diagnostics. but there was also a data g that was one mobile collaboration. and vaccines and other products, which seemed like, you know, we lost over 5000000 people. those are just the non cases, a number of much, much higher than that. these are gilbert public goods. and as a gina 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 a vaccines and drugs. and we need to model a new model, and i hope that the find any treaty that's now being negotiated by the member states of the organization will take this opportunity to put in place mechanisms, process guidance, at least for the future, for future generations. if there's a pandemic again, that we need to develop products which are then equitably distributed. and so this dynamic, we've started work with technology trans, the hub to mentioned, the one in south africa. we're just trying to build a capacity to make and modern vaccines. and to train d, i some other thought to sonya for bringing your wisdom. you'll insight to us on the stream dr. regina, thank you as well. and actually it's always a pleasure having you. i mean, leave you here on my laptop with a w h o,

a home page here. and you can see all of the information about the current virus oven 19 pandemic, including the new variant. thanks for watching everybody. i'll see you next time. the philippines is flashing to restore fire induct saying, i cut the quantity only the night and the wrong one. i wanna invest a guides on al jazeera unless honey, how will host the middle east? well, come in preparation. the country is staging. a major tournament with 16 nations going head to head in thanks purpose bill stadiums. 2022 will keep you across the action as council prepares for the regions biggest ever sporting events that the for our cup on algebra as

a cannon ball. i watched these scenes with horror as a kenyan sumani, i feared the backlash, ethnic somalis had long been the target of intimidation and persecution. in kenya, almost every woman was it. mohammed a doubt, travels through his homeland to reveal how his people and family have been subjected to years of brutal discrimination. just typical of the way we are treated in a country were colo algae, 0 correspondence leave us drying out greasing. land is shrinking, and some roots long used by wildlife for migration have been blocked by human settlements. to deal with all these kenya needs more money for conservation. and with the corona buyers condemn a keeping many visitors. awake revenue from towards him. isn't enough. here at the allison national park, and i knew all ceremony has been launched the whole creation than individuals pay $5000.00 to name and the aim this year is to raise $1000000.00. much of

it for conservation initiatives. lou, the only kron varian drives aren't covered 19 cases in south africa. the health minister says the serge can be managed without a strict, the locked out. ah, i'm sam is a dan. this is al jazeera alive from dell hall, so coming up ukraine's defense minister claims russia is likely to escalate the crisis by the end of january. both sides say they don't want to war though. uganda troops continue their security.