oh. this is deja vu news live from berlin america's largest city braces to become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic cases of the infection are skyrocketing in new york stretching the city's health care system to the limit will a massive aid package bring relief here and across the united states also coming up japan bans arrivals from europe and sets up a coronavirus task force the cherry blossom season brings people flocking to the parks but the governor of tokyo urges them to stay at home to limit the spread of

coronavirus and the chief of the e.u. slams member states for not showing solidarity as the coronavirus moves through the continent and europe really needed to be there for each other. too many initially looked out for themselves. when europe really needed only for one spirit. too many initially days only from the response. e.u. commission president personal underline criticizes some states for not coordinating their virus was fonts can the e.u. come together to tackle the crisis. i'm sorry kelly welcome to the program is the united states is well on its way to becoming the new epicenter of the covert 19 pandemic the. his death toll has now

topped 1000 and with nearly 70000 confirmed cases the country trails only italy and china for the highest number of infections the u.s. economy is also reeling with the crisis fueling a record surge in unemployment claims meanwhile the country's largest city new york is struggling to cope critical supplies are lacking hospitals are overwhelmed and authorities have resorted to building makeshift morgue. times square is rarely if ever as empty as this and it's a similar story on 5th avenue to new york as the epicenter of the outbreak in the u.s. a 3rd of all cases in the country are from here it's an extraordinary situation and one of the world's greatest cities businesses are letting staff go many hospitals are overstretched there's a shortage of tens of thousands of respirators across the state what we're seeing right now is huge challenges and intense stress in particular on

our hospital capacity on the men and women who do such amazing work in our health care system and clearly on the supplies or equipment that we need to make sure we can keep moving forward the biggest financial stimulus package in u.s. history is set to become law after its passage through congress 2 trillion dollars to ease the economic impact of the corona virus outbreak president trump says he will sign it these images demonstrate how serious the situation is a temporary morgue outside a new york hospital. u.s. media reports say morgues on the east coast are set to hit capacity soon across the u.s. more than a 1000 people have died of the virus. let's bring indeed that we have stefan simons in washington so how are authorities coping with the situation right now in new york. bailey they're trying to everybody is in

agreement here in the united states that the governor of new york will probably the best he can new york as you pointed out really a hot mess and what i mean by this is that they really need everything they need more beds and more protective gear for health workers nurses and doctors they need more ventilators they unfortunately actually also need more and more makeshift morgues refrigerated trucks the governor just finished a press conference or press talk if you will and complained about just getting 5000000000 dollars out of the stimulus package which went through the senate in the last night. in this law $150000000000.00 for the state governments to help them cope with this but the $5000000000.00 for new york state including 2 york city is really just a drop in the bucket so that's not really sufficient and of course with this increasing coronavirus crisis in the epicenter new york because where

remember the peak is not even close yet that's about 2 weeks away the governor said . it doesn't look too good for for new york why is the infection rates so high there. because new york as well as the entire united states came fairly late to the game to say though that new york new york city as well as the governor from new york as soon as this came really as a as a bleeping red dog on their radar installed fairly draconian. measures to to get a handle on this growing crisis and the skyrocketing infections thought new york was always a city which was open for business and open for for tourists until travel bans were installed by the federal government for europe and for china before that so that

explains it. tell us a little bit more because i mean the message that we've really heard from the governor is the bottom line is as follows they do not have enough respirators in order to handle the number of projected infections on the people who will need that i.c.u. care on the other hand we have this unprecedented 2.2 trillion rescue package which has cleared the senate in the u.s. will that go any way to offer some assistance on the front lines. right so yeah $13130000000000.00 in this stimulus packages straight goes straight to hospitals and health care workers and that is great that they have money to purchase what they need but the problem is that all the money you have now to purchase what you need it's nice to have if there's not enough stuff to purchase and states are struggling and competing against each other and with the federal agency female for resources so that's that's not very coordinated it doesn't look

like it and it's really a struggle number one number 2 the entire stimulus package every expert says that right now is just a band-aid it's good for now to give people a paycheck of $1200.00 a family $2400.00 somewhere in april because $3300000.00 people claimed unemployment in one week that's a record one week in the in the history of the united states absolute record and this is not going to stop the more every state every community and the country itself shocks the economy closes down the economy because the only chance is to get a handle on the spread of the virus the the bigger the pain economically and for everybody involved everybody who loses a job everybody who doesn't know how to pay a mortgage or rent or anything like this is probably the same situation as in germany and europe i'm sure it is the problem here is the united states is at the

beginning of a major crisis still this is not the peak the peak is far away from everything and the other states are ringing the alarm bell that there is really really really steep price to pay they have no resources whatsoever and this is where we are in america right now the world's largest economy and we have only just seen it be canning step on simon's with the view from washington thank you. japan is banning arrivals from $21.00 european countries and setting up a coronavirus task force says it warns that the epidemic could spread rapidly and widely 40 new cases have been confirmed bringing the country's total to 1300 but there is concern that many in japan have been slow to get the message about curbing the spread of the virus. enjoying the outdoors people in tokyo have been taking to the city's parks to soak up the spring weather and admired the

seasonal cherry blossom crowds gather in public spaces despite appeals by the authorities to help contain the current of ours outbreak. we want to go to more still like there are more people here than i expected so it was a great policeman might come and tell us to leave it. on this kid. like us i'm a good thing i've been inside the house for a long time for his feud to be outside. it feels nice. on thursday came a stern warning from tokyo governor urging people to avoid non-essential outings to look at the new 30 middle queue is that a crucial juncture it faces the risk of an explosive spray it off the coronavirus. the call immediately prompted residents to queue up at supermarkets to stock up on food and supplies. you will need to know this repairs to their couldn't get

anything or so shop to allow to come out again i'm glad i was able to buy things today. with packs crowds moving from talk us parks to cash registers warnings of a looming national crisis have grown all the louder. let's get a quick check of some of the stories making news around the world the u.s. has charged venezuelan president and other top officials in his administration with narco terrorism crimes the troubled ministration accuses president nicolas maduro of conspiracy to allow colombian drug traffickers to use venice well as a base the charge is seen as an escalation of the u.s. government's campaign to oust. china has ordered airlines to cut their international flights even further to prevent a coronavirus from being brought to overseas carriers will now only be allowed to run why. on route to each country and only fly it once a week china is hoping to avoid a 2nd spike in virus cases caused by people returning home.

the european parliament in brussels has been debating special measures to cushion the economic impact of the pandemic and right now e.u. leaders are meeting via video conference to discuss steps to mitigate the crisis in a speech to lawmakers european commission president ursula funder lyon expressed her dismay at member states lack of solidarity including decisions to close borders when europe really needed all for one spirit too many initially gave only for me response and when europe really needed to prove that this is not only a fear whether union too many initially refused to share their umbrella but it was not long before some felt the consequences of their own uncooled the need to take action a successful u.p.a. in response can only be coordinated if our internal market and our shannon

area work of the way it should a crisis without borders cannot be resolved by putting barriers between us and the correspondent bound to regard as following today's developments for us in brussels bant a pretty strong condemnation that we just heard there from the european commission president hu is she referring to. images you were thinking about germany and france these 2 countries refused in the very beginning of the corona crisis the supply of medical equipment to other e.u. countries this ban has no been lifted but they also the czech republic and poland which close the borders so vigorously that supply chains for food got interrupted and there was left on the line that cannot be but many members of the parliament said let's not make lame games now we have to look for but there's no time for that

we have to talk about the next step of sort of. the which is the financial because somebody has to feed the bill now for the shutdown of the economies. we have leaders discussing the way forward on a video conference any idea about what solutions they could come up with here but there are 9 countries within the euro zone the currency zone that demond the issue of corona or euro bonds that means common debt that is everybody is responsible for that so this would make taking out loans for countries like spain france and italy much easier and cheaper but on the other hand other countries like germany and austria would have to pay more though this is a very thorny issue and many states that argue we already have many common fiscal instruments and plays that use them for those that keep the powder dry

a corona bones are the very last step in the future tell us a little bit more about these so-called khurana bonds i mean these are essentially euro bonds rebranded here we have opposition from countries like austria germany the netherlands why are they opposed. well the more southern countries like germany austrian alters than other than say the poorer countries would borrow our good ratings and now these countries rich countries are not paying anything for the debt on the of the financial markets and the other countries have to pay and if you have then the middle way both parties have to pay and germany would also have to pay much more for its debt the new loans that have to be taken out now and this is something that the finance minister so far refused but it's not excluded that in the end after a couple of months or even a year this is really necessary because then there's no other chance than getting

money because italy and spain might be cut off from the financial markets like greece has been a couple of years ago bantry got in brussels thank you matt. you're watching news don't forget more news on our web site that's at dot com you can follow us on social media i'm sorry thank you very much for watching stay safe. combating the corona pandemic. where does research stand. what are scientists learning. background information and. our daily corrupt. 19 special next on d.w. .

ringback for all countries terrorist terrorists terrorists a simple message yes a simple solution we're not sure and certainly not all countries have been employing it the fight against corona virus has multiple fronts testing tracing infection chains racing to create vaccines and treatments or seeing what already exists and what could be adapted to treat the novel coronavirus how should

countries prioritize. i'm gentle and those are the kinds of questions we want to answer and the. 19 special it's the same one scientists and government officials have a grappled with since the beginning of the outbreak now back to the message to test test and test south korea was one of the countries which followed the world health organization's advice most diligently and managed to flatten the curve here's how south korea did it. in a hospital has created a new system for testing patients suspected of suffering from the corona virus coded 19 after an initial consultation patients enter a booth to have samples taken and talked to a medical technician using an intercom. so young here on have developed a fever and other cold like symptoms and decided to get a test just to be safe. if you don't know that you have it pandemics parents

even if you're a little anxious it's good to have a test at 1st i was scared when i heard about it but it wasn't as painful as i thought and it was actually kind of interesting. to do the sort of the brainchild of dr kim saying gil really designs were quickly put in service on march 10th the booth helped medical workers process patients 10 times faster than the traditional procedure. prior to the introduction of the system patients were treated in large negative pressure reams which take a long time to sterilize them ventilate it's inefficient and doctors and nurses have to meet people face to face and we're nervous about exposure and tie it this physical separation is safe and enables prompt examinations. dozens of hospitals in south korea and abroad have expressed interest in implementing a booth testing system although these prototypes are not scaled for manufacturing

dr kim has shared his know how. testing has been a key pillar to south korea's response to the corona virus outbreak seeking to flatten the curve and reduce the number of new cases without implementing a complete lockdown test kits manufactured here have been exploited to other countries to strengthen their response to the pandemic. drive through testing has also been an innovative way south korea has battled the corona virus outbreak despite fewer coronavirus cases in south korea in recent days medical intern part junsu argues for rapid testing. the number of confirmed persons is gradually decreasing. the most important thing to get rid of the epidemic is to identify the suspect to patients as soon as possible and have them self isolate over steve necessary treatment if you have even

a little fifi or suspected symptoms it's recommended that you go to the hospital and get tested it will conduct leaflets and. after examining thousands of patients drive through an booth testing have only uncovered a few cases of the coronavirus but they have offered a lot of reassurance to a nervous population. joining me now is al edwards he is a professor and immunologist at the university of reading in the u.k. . now south korea's method seems to be working so why aren't all affected countries doing mass testing if they can. it's a really good question i think that the video you just saw gives you some glimpses as to why testing itself is a very valuable tool but it's quite labor intensive and it has to be done really carefully because if you do testing in a way that isn't properly and safely controlled there is

a risk that you can also spread the virus or put your health workers at risk when they take those samples so it's a delicate balance and it needs a lot of manpower well because of the complexity of this task we can imagine that not all countries are able to enroll this kind of mass testing what would you recommend for those countries so i think the most important thing is to spread the results you have wisely so what's really important is to 1st of all prioritize people who are in hospital and also health care workers because these are the most vulnerable people and also the most exposed people and by prioritizing the use of your testing results and by using that smartly as possible even if you have limited testing results it's still incredibly value and it gives you so much data and so much information about what's going on what about home testing kits could they help at all yes there's

a number of different technologies and tools out there. these can even be a simple i have one here at this little plastic because that could potentially be used at home this kind of technology is going to be incredibly useful but it does have to be used very carefully so when you do a lab test you have the best possible accuracy if you do a home test they're not quite as accurate but they're more convenient so you have to make sure that you use the best possible science and medical practice to use these tests effectively rather than just using them without proper consideration. now testing is of course one issue but how much of an issue is for example global access to vaccines and treatments going to be are we in danger of seeing a 1st come 1st serve the prochoice which could prioritize rich countries for example yeah and i think that's already happening to

a degree with testing even the better of countries are getting 1st access to testing technology and unfortunately i could see the same thing happen with their opie's there's some really good news and some positive news which is that people seem to be incredibly open to sharing the information they have about improved treatments and that's vital so everybody has that knowledge but whether we can see the same sharing of resources i'm not so sure about whether that resource in terms of ventilators or when vaccines start to be manufactured whether people will share them around i'm not sure whether that's going to happen we'll have to see. information sharing as well as resource sharing it's going to be vital thank you very much al edward he is a professor and immunologist at the university of reading in the u.k. thanks for your insights. now vaccines seem to interest many of you as you've been sending us your questions in the last few days our science correspondent derek williams has some answers for you take

a look. why will it take so long to come up with a vaccine the problem with developing any pharmaceutical product is that it has to go through an exhaustive testing process with the vaccine you 1st have to identify good potential candidates and that when astonishingly quickly this time within weeks of identifying the virus and sequencing its genome researchers begin talking about candidates but that's just the start you next have to test your candidate for safety usually you do it 1st in animals and then in increasingly large groups of humans but only after a candidate has proven safety developers usually begin looking at actually how effective it is so that even if and when you're a candidate fulfills all of those criteria you still have to ramp up production to manufacture hundreds of millions or even billions of doses now there are ways to speed the entire process up a little bit for example by by running some of those trials in parallel rather than

one after the other but that approach has drawbacks to and that's why most experts usually predict that we won't have a vaccine ready to distribute on a wide scale for at least a year and a half. why do people talk so much about a vaccine is a medication more important. medications are of course important for limiting the impact of the virus on patients around the world but long term to defeat the disease we need what's called herd immunity and the best way to get that is through vaccines if we don't develop vaccines experts currently estimate that between 50 and 70 percent of us would have to get covert 19 before herd immunity kicked in and stopped the pandemic naturally but along the way it could potentially kill millions of people so a vaccine offers a safe alternative to achieving immunity in a large percentage of the population and thousands of prevention is really. worth

a pound of cure that's why although treatments are very important long term that scenes are even more so is that research on how existing drugs affect i think 19. a range of potential drugs that might one day help treat kovac 19 are being trialled around the world but we don't really have many results for any of them so far the world health organization is looking at 3 candidates in particular that have shown some promise 1st it's examining the effects of stablished anti-malarial drug song coronavirus symptoms. sponsored trials are also ongoing for combinations of antivirals that have already been approved for treating a hiv and finally one of the most promising substances is a compound called rendez if here it was originally developed as a potential treatment for ebola but it didn't work out for that disease as well as hoped retrospective testing however showed that it did affect replication in the

summer is virus so hopes are high that it might also affect that pathogens close relative the new corona virus the best thing about all of these candidates is that most or all of the development has already been done for them so production could be ramped up quickly if they did prove effective and these clinical trials we should know soon if any of them work. and before we let you go we step away from the sobering world of tests and vaccines $20.00 in lighter fare one restaurant in hanoi has created the corona burger so far only available in vietnam but it looks set to take off the world wide it's a beef burger in a green tea stand by her shapes are bought the restaurant owner is the whited with his creation he says business is good i know hopefully remind customers to wash their hands before eating. and there are swiss confectioner's reminding us of the

season but also of the times when chocolate easter bunnies a decorated with little face masks. and that was our. special for more do check out our social media channels i'm john thank you for watching and stay healthy everyone.

he is a master of the art of confrontation and this is wrong measuring of verbal combat doesn't mean you're going to see yogic flying the undisputed champion of tough political talk trying to frighten people you know and so far everybody understands that it's absolutely true the conflict zone and join jim sebastian as he holds the powerful to account this is a victory here whichever way you like to spin the conflict zone. next on the.

story so that people will hold on for g.w. on facebook and twitter up to date and in touch follow us. there if something that is not working some people decide not to see it why not have the palin luncheon for us all the time countries and calles are you talking about a bad i don't have it it's my duty to put the other side to france's president emanuel macrolides to be seen as one of the driving forces for reform in the u. but his efforts to change his own country around a serious trouble my guess this week here in brussels is his former europe minister not only was 0 one of his most vocal cheerleaders in the european politics is the macro revolution a drop.