some little boat isn't mechanical or even that self driving train to be up or down towards today can be dealing with a human robot like me, will be everywhere else. is there a documentary which to lead on the weird and wonderful world of global learn? think and even trust, i feel like i'm alive, but i know i on the machine origins of this which is called the cases are rising again along with variance of the virus. the world health organization says that once it's experts to return to china, to find out more about the origins of the disease. so how much of a danger is this? wait, this is inside store the

hello and welcome to the program. i'm how much i'm june. only 4 years ago, the name cove it hadn't even been invented. but today it's a terminal in the world over after the worst pandemic and living memory. how it started is a known. but what is known is that it's still very much around. the extent is less than before, but the latest figures show incidents of the disease is on the rise. there are many variance to has the virus mutates and develops as it spreads. that presents challenges to scientists working on developing vaccines that can cope with the new threats. a couple 19 cases are on the rise. in some countries, the world health organization says nearly 1500000 new infections and more than 2500 depths have been reported from july to early august. the number of infections was up 80 percent on the previous month. the cases are driven by new variants. the w h o says it's concerned about the spread in the northern hemisphere. governments are approving updated vaccines to tackle the new forms. covered 19 has killed nearly 7000000 people since it was 1st detected in china and late 2019. the financial

times is reported that the world health organization chief wants to w h o exports to be allowed to return to china for more investigations into how the disease started. a report after a previous visit was inconclusive. but to me, theories are that the disease was transferred from animals to humans that are food market and move on or from a leak from the cities biology laboratory. the w h o chief says the answer is not known conclusively, but will be found. before we talk to our panel, a guess, let's 1st speak with dr. marie, event or cold. who is the cold night? see technical lead of the world health organization? doctor venture cove. thanks so much for being with us today on inside story. let me ask you 1st about the fact that the w h o is urging china to offer more information on the origins of cobit 19 and is ready to send the 2nd team there to prove the matter. have you all received any response from china thus far? well, i mean, as you've pointed out, we still don't know how this pandemic began in 4 years on this question remains

vitally important. not only to understand how this one begin to, but to prevent the next one. so we have been working with our colleagues in china, diplomatically scientifically to advance our understanding. and we need collaboration. we need cooperation through scientific study, through different missions. we've actually had several missions to china, and we had always envisioned that there would be more emissions to follow up the different hypotheses to better understand early data collection, early cases, the importance of the market, any potential breach of biosafety bias security in the lab. but we have yet to receive full, an open cooperation from china to be able to really understand those early as cases dr. banter called earlier this year, the w h o declared, the coping 19 no longer qualifies as a global health emergency. but that certainly doesn't mean that cover 19 is no longer with this. right. i mean, the pandemic has not come to an end, correct? that's right. the emergency of code was declared over, but the threat is not. this virus is with us,

the virus is circulating in all countries. we are, we have a really sharp decline in surveillance and reporting. so we don't have good visibility on how much this virus is circulating in every country, only that we know that it is. we are seeing increases in case reporting and a number of countries, but more worrying is that we are seeing increases in hospitalization, in the americas and in europe where there's good reporting or also seeing increases in depth increases in emissions to i see you for years in and it shouldn't be happening, given that we have tools that can actually prevent people from needing hospitalization, developing severe disease and dying the fact that the virus is mutating and changing. um, what does that say about the vaccines still being able to provide good protection against getting very sick to? so the virus is evolving and we're seeing new variance being detected regularly. and this is something that we expect to continue with so much circulation, the virus will mutate and more variance will emerge. what we don't know is if the

variance will become more severe or less severe, the worrying on possibilities that we would have a more severe variance. and as you've pointed out, we need to make sure that our counter measures work, that our diagnostics can still detect cases and put patients into that clinical care pathway that are antivirals who work or other therapeutics work. and then our vaccines will continue to provide protection against severe disease and death. so surveillance remains vitally important to be able to see what is circulating, what it means in terms of its impact in the human population. but also to look at the past and eunice scape to look at if the vaccines need to be updated. and we have a process that's been put in place with our technical advisory groups for virus evolution, looking at the variance themselves to characterize each of them to say of their variance of interest or variance of concern. and our technical advisory group for corporate 19 vaccine composition. looks at the compositions of the current vaccines to see if updates need to be made. there are some updates that are coming out in terms of the vaccines. but vaccination and boosting, particularly among those were most at risk over 60 or over 70 people who are i'm,

you know, compromise people with underlying conditions. make sure that they get that additional dose that booster dose if you haven't had a booster dose in the last 6 to 12 months. get one, do not wait. dr. adventure cove. certainly we've seen that around the world. vigilance has dropped. people are much more relaxed when it comes to cobit 19. i want to ask you how much has surveillance of coping 19 decreased the world over and from your vantage point. our government's being vigilant enough. so surveillance has dropped significantly and this puts us in a disadvantaged position to really understand what is in circulation, what impact it is having. so we can't government can't keep up the surveillance that they had at the peak of the pen demik. and what we're doing right now is working with governments to calibrate the systems going forward. what is the right amount of surveillance that is necessary to many countries right now, our declining surveillance too much in terms of how much the virus is actually

circulating. so we need that to be wrapped up to be able to look at trends and look at trends in severity and hospitalization. so nicely you and not just looking at it within their own countries to take steps to mitigate those matters. but to report that to us so that we can make assessments risk assessments that regional and at global levels. but we need countries to remain vigilant. individuals are living their lives that because population level immunity has increased and they have some protection against severe disease and death of governments can't drop the ball. governments still need to remain vigilant for this fire is in the context of everything else, not covered only, but cobit in the context of influenza and r. s, fee and other infectious diseases, but also in the context of floods and droughts and fires. to be able to make sure that this is a disease that we manage better. we can do much more to protect people against infection, protect people against developing severe disease and dying, not at the expense of other programs and other diseases, but we have to get this response, right?

and that's what we're working on. how do we calibrate this response as we go forward? so much more work needs to be done to be able to achieve this. dr. marie of enter code dakota 19 technical lead at the world health organization. thank you so much for joining us on insight story. great to talk to you in great to get your perspective. thank. thanks for having me. the alright, let's go ahead and bring in our guest. joining us from nor it's in the united kingdom is dr. paul hunter. he's professor in medicine at the university of east anglia. dr patrick tang during just by sky from here in durham, east division chief of micro biology, et cetera medicine. and joining by sky from bristol in the united kingdom is dr. gabriel scout. he's professor of public health at bursley university. a warm welcome to each of you, and thanks for joining us today on inside story. patrick, let me start with you today. um, what danger does coby 19 now pose, and how much cause for concern is there at this particular time? the 1st of all, thank you for having me on the show. i'm go with 19 now has to be looked at in

perspective of all of the various geared towards the viruses, the also circulating and all the other public health emergencies that we have to deal with. right now, so, so what's happening from the beginning of the over to now is that we've built up a lot of hidden units each bolt through our vaccination campaigns, as well as through natural infection. so much of the world has them unity either through one of those or both of those routes. so we're in a much better position to handle new ways of the, the infection now. but it still remains the danger because the viruses evolving in a way that's faster than some of the other viruses back that we normally, we have have like the ones that are as the and these other viruses. so, so there's still a chance that it can become more serious or that it could be able to transfer me. it's in a more efficient manner. that is right now i'm, i'm have some sort of amused tape over the built up community that we have in that

population. so we definitely need insurance, but it has to be put in perspective of all the other things we face now. paul patrick was talking there about the, the new waves of cobit 19 and the threats they post. let me ask you from your perspective, how much of a danger is the wave that we are currently experiencing? well, i think this is a lot of things going on at the moment. they visit the to you various, the point 5 out of the a be a want to point tech 6 to the have been relatively recently described the most recent ball, which is a whole lot of mutations has cause i think both uncertain, although at the moment it is still only responsible for less than about one or 2 percent of infections in your but that may well change. there are lots of mutations with the gen i made many of those new patients we've seen before. so it's

been kind of difficult to judge how much more of a problem they knew very well be. ultimately they some of the initial, the bar 2 studies are looking that it might not be quite as bad as we have. so initially, but i think it's still very early days and we need to really monitor the cap play over the coming weeks before we can actually make a copy judgement. gabriel paul was talking there about mutations. the virus, as we know it mutates that changes all the time. do vaccine still provide good protection against the getting very sick? oh, i think there's no dot the vaccination shooters and a really important part of programs in countries to it to combat cove and 19 and unfortunately how that for some countries are restricting the level of vaccination, restricting the levels of boosters. and we've got to remember, but it's not just protecting the individual who as cobra,

but it's also protecting other people, people who have vulnerabilities who are immune suppressed. and we know corporate is really, really dangerous in that situation. and we've seen during the worst of the kind of demick really bad, all the breaks and in, in the hospitals where people were very vulnerable. so to protect the vulnerable, we need to key to keep up the levels of vaccination. we need to change the boxing, and that's happening. works happening to try and catch up with the latest bearings . so it's a constant process and the other constant process has to be vigilance. i think it's really unfortunate that countries are coming back on their public health monitoring . and in fact, many countries have a weak, haven't, well, they haven't strength and their public health systems. we need stronger public health systems across all countries. in order not just to do will go with what to do with other threats as well. hey gabriel, let me just follow up with you because you make a good point about, you know, being concerned, the governments, as you said,

really aren't doing enough. i'm the fact that we went through this pandemic and that so many countries around the world were caught unawares. um, how much concern do you have that we're going to get caught unaware again and, and why do you think that even after experiencing a cold with 19 um there is still this reluctance to invest more in public health programs. it is a strange, isn't that i think when you look at this, this, your scale of code, what state across the world, it was such a shock in so many ways, but so many countries, economically and socially, educationally, all sorts of ways. and when vaccination came along and we managed to get cool that under control to some extent, i think that was a collective sigh of relief or real wish to put it behind us. i think that's probably the reason we haven't really looked hard yet though there are countries

inquiring into their, their poor performance. we haven't really seen the investments in public health systems monitoring on surveillance and also the investment in our, our infrastructure. just basic infrastructure like ventilation to make sure that people in schools and hospitals in factories and in all sorts of places can have access to clean air because clean air is the biggest protection we have patrick. um, do we know if the latest iterations of the, of the vaccine um a are effective against newer variance of cobra id like e g 5. so we do know that the new vaccines there, they're actually, you probably wouldn't even call them boosters anymore. they're actually contain a very different virus, it's the, the, the variance of code 19. and that one is shown to be effective against all

of these, some of the needs is that you're talking about. so we should expect that it should give good protection for people there, but like how they keep on, you know, compromise people and people who have other serious cool morbidities. paul, do you have a, an idea of where we are at the moment when it comes to vaccination rates around the world? i mean, are, are people still more or less getting vaccinated? getting the boosters or, or has that really plummet? i think it may be so i think they one of the things that i wouldn't point time please the whole lives. there's 2 elements of the immunity to cubic wine. so you need a fee to infection and the other is protection against severe disease. if you do get infected, oh no, the themes actually get very important. eating function, get very durable, protection against infection are, but so far,

least we've seen very good protection against severe disease lasting many months. i mean, the, if you've actually had the boxing been infected and recovered from the section already, that gives you a very good protection against leading to, going to hospitalized. when you do get to an infection on the thing that seems to reduce transmission infections, but not to very long unfortunately. and the lucky all the dates are at some of the about 6 months in 6 months, have to box the nation. the more people have lost the protection against infection, but not against severe disease, and some of that loss is because of the parents of use, a few patients. some of these actually because of declining a short lived in unity, which used to be only states with a surprise because show duration of the unity service birth free infections is something that we know the box a decade. oh, well, let me also ask you

a minute. we should take this opportunity to point out, you know, how remarkable it was, how quickly a vaccine was actually developed for coping 19 and how quickly the, these boosters and, and new iterations. the vaccine seem to be coming out and getting approved by different regulatory agencies. but we do know that the virus mutates uh that it changes and it spreads um, how much of a challenge does that pose to the scientists working on developing the newer innovations, the vaccines, the ones that can cope with the newest threats? yeah, i mean, we've already spoken about the latest faxing. this is just being licensed in stacy's, the based on x x the wow. the iris which was very common. the yeah. around the stuff. but now it's actually pretty rare it's, it's on its way out and it's being replaced by of the various, particularly at the level the g, like 5, which is probably the,

the commonest individual variance in most many countries now. and so already the, the virus, the battery, is the, this new vaccine was direct to die, has already pretty much died at the us. we are still see a fairly reasonable protection against, especially against severe disease, also against infection pro, any of the viruses against any of the new very circulating. so when people think about the new bearings, bypassing immunity from vaccine, it's never a total thing. it's always projections and, and it was, when you go, when you're talking about height, would you be able to see people with the facts and they said and had an infection and most of us literally, oh, so this lovely you back to me already had want to infections,

but looking at the oh and that states are in the u. k. in england, probably we had some wherever the order of about 2 and a half infections that this us and, but we're still seeing severe disease in the multiple levels. so taking together, i think the, the fact seems for people who need them for the prevention of severe disease is still something that will be giving for it is yes, but uh yeah, we are coming towards some sorts of mean for librium that with the virus in patrick, in many parts of the world, the testing for covet has been massively scaled back. how difficult does it make it? so when it comes to knowing how many people might have it and knowing how to deal with it more going forward, that's a big challenge. you know, probably in the every country around the world as you mounted, the clinical and public health testing of people that are sick is going down. we have very little data to guide us in terms of how we manage the,

the ongoing waves of coby 19. but in many countries, they have to security and more passive ways are environmental surveillance. so doing things like waste water surveillance and looking at the levels of the virus surfaces thing in the waste water and that can reflect the activity and sometimes you've been pre days. yeah. there are ways of virus in, in the community so, so there are alternative ways of looking at it. and of course you are right there are normal ways of surveillance art or lacking gabriel. it looked like you wanted to jump in. i saw you reacting just in. did you want to go ahead as well? i think what we have to do is not rely totally on the the sort of magic bullets of the, of the science and the vaccine and so on. and we've got to do something really fundamental stuff. and that means putting in good ventilation systems, good filtration system so that we can all have clean hair. and we don't have to go

back and, you know, a long way to find out how effective those were on the way in which we rebuilt in many societies, particularly in the northern hemisphere. we rebuilt lots of our buildings to cope with tuberculosis when it was a huge pandemic across the northern hemisphere countries. and we did change things. we did rebuild with schools and we built in ventilation at the hospitals in, in new and innovative ways to try and reduce the spread of thought. there are more disease the good investment, not, not just in the surveillance of the public health systems that some of my colleagues have been talking about. but also in making places healthy for us to live and work in so that we can be protected not just from color, but from all of the other was spread traits strep. so there are that might be spread in our houses, schools shops or wherever it is. we are patrick. it a look to me like you were reacting some more gabriel was saying,

did you want to jump in as well? yeah, that's absolutely true. there. there are many other measures that we can put in to try to reduce the burden numbers here, tori, diseases, and the raptor either a similar attempt that makes from happening so. so what's happening now is during the pandemic, many of the viruses that we normally deal with, like influenza are speed, their pattern and zip also shifted as well too. so there's a little bit of unpredictability in many of the re spiritual any viruses. so we really have to be on our toes in terms of being ready with back the right back. see, be ready with all these other counter measures and, and just improving our ability to, to reduce the transmission within our, in your environments so. so those are absolutely important things that we have to do in, and of course we can forget that we have to maintain funding for public health. and, and i think that's something that many people want to forget about after the

pandemic. and that, that's something we have to keep telling the story that then a lot of these viruses do a search and meetings. there are outbreaks every year, all the time with different viruses that, that may not make it into the news. yeah. patrick. uh, that's a good point and, and before covered 19, you had scientists, you had doctors, organizations, it's saying that governments should be investing more in public health. i mean, it's not new to certainly hear those warnings. um, do you think that message is actually being heated? do you, do you think that the more governments are actually taking that into account and, and doing more or are prepared to do more going forward? i think you, we have to ride the movements on. right. and it's, it's really easy to, to lose that story amongst all the other things are happening around the world. and i think, you know, in the past, outbreaks costs the world, you tens of billions of dollars every year in, in los global economic output rates. so. so i think there definitely is a economic case for it and, and there's probably a case for in almost everything,

whether it is that our society, united education, there is definitely a benefit to preventing outbreaks in and reducing the burden of infectious diseases globally. but but we have to we need examples for the board for governments to see for them to take action. and i think it's important that we keep visual ends about colby 19 keep telling the stories and remembering what happened during cove and 19 so that we still are able to for action and continued action against future candidates. paul, i saw your reacting as well. looks like you might have wanted to add to uh, to attached go saying there's please go ahead. yeah, i think public health that's always suffered from the problem that when he does its job, right. nobody notices it when it does its job. no rice then people notice and i think that's the issue. there are numerous episodes over our recent history,

all the money being saved on public health initiatives that was then. busy by the costs of coping with the outcome, the up until the public health of the prevention a gabriel mentioned too. but you, let's stop. you know, the, uh, the, the cut box in the us. a 2 bed 2 lucy's program in the few decades back was followed by a very much more problems with cubic lessons that call sambal than the original savings for cheap. so yeah, it is a problem. a politicians generally have short memories. uh they uh yeah they uh, we will use the same with the faxing. it's always easier to box the people to against influenza the have that makes sense. yeah. before that make yeah, this is a problem and how we deal with these folks and in public call session and political

will is, is i think one of the biggest issues that we've got to facing coming is gabriel. it looks like you wanted to jump in. so i'm gonna give you the opportunity, we don't have a whole lot of time left. so, but before i let you talk, i also want to ask you about the fact that all around the world, it does feel like many are acting like depend, demik is over. but the simple truth is that it just isn't the correct. oh, absolutely. and i think one of the things way, how touchstone a tool which some economic commentators and some finance departments are treasury departments in government commenting on. is this your burden of long cove? it the people who have cobit, i'm the small percentage of them who go on to have a really long lasting and very disabling symptoms. of all sorts of that burden needs to be factored in. and we need to not only look after them well, but we need to put all our effort into trying to keep cove it under control. so it's not up to those burdens. and they are big economic as well as social and

terrible health burdens on the individuals and their families. so i think that's, that's really, really important. international cooperation is absolutely vital around issues such as the distribution of, of vaccines. and we know that. but each country as well needs to look at how is they've done in terms of vaccination, because i know but examples where there's been a real social class divide in terms of the uptake of bucks in the industry. and some of the people at the, at the least, well off community level, both geographically and maybe a issues of, of race and color on, on that level of education. i'm still are not getting the vaccines that really would help them. so we need to be putting the effort and all into trying to get to people who maybe help them being box. and there's a door through the course of the pandemic. all right, well we have run out of time, so we're going to have to leave the conversation there. thanks so much to all of our guest. doctor paul hunter,

dr. patrick tang and dr. gabriel scully. and earlier thanks to dr. marie adventure cove and thank you to for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting our website up 0. com. and further discussion cut our facebook page. that's facebook dot com, forward slash ag inside stored. you can also join the conversation on x, formerly known as twitter, or handle is at a j inside story for me, how much control and whole team here, bye for now, the, the, the, to the

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