subscribe. documentary. this is g.w. news live from berlin tonight america's largest city bracing to become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic the number of new cases is skyrocketing in new york stretching the city's health care system to the limit will a massive aid package help bring relief also coming up the coronavirus and reeses squalid migrant camps with tens of thousands packed closely together the threat of

an infection is high activists say the european union has act now to take people to safety. i'm burnt coffee it's good to have you with us the united states is well on its way to becoming the new epicenter of the 19 pandemic the country's death toll has now topped 1000 and with nearly 70000 confirmed cases the country trails only italy and china in the highest number of infections the u.s. economy is also reeling with the crisis fueling a record surge in unemployment claims last week meanwhile the country's largest city new york it is struggling to cope critical supplies are lacking hospitals are overwhelmed and authorities resorted to building make shift more. fear is

growing rapidly across new york as is the number of people infected with coronavirus many have to wait in line here in front of elmhurst hospital in queens doctors worry the health system could collapse we are definitely seeing study 4050 year olds with no co-morbidities no diabetes no coronary artery disease no high blood pressure or. other very much otherwise healthy individuals state governor andrew cuomo is trying to set up as many beds as possible 1000 in this congress sent to unknown aside from staff shortages he's also concerned about a lack of ventilate his ventilators ventilators ventilators we need 30000 we have in the existing hospital system 4000 ventilators this is just in the normal operation of hospitals etc as more people are tested the number of known infections grows the virus had spread here for weeks before testing was made possible new york

is trying desperately to stay up and running subway trains and buses a still operating this constant cleaning but the city is being forced to prepare for the worst kula trucks stand ready behind the public bellevue hospital as makeshift morgues. over more than snow this bring it. on she is in washington d.c. good evening to you stefan i mean is this a kings in new york that the authorities have acted have responded too late to this break. i think it's fair to say that you could say this for the entire united states the response came too late there were red flags enough red flanks. and. the state governments as well as the federal government came a little bit too late to the party you remember that the federal government president gul trump right behind me in this in the white house made an absolute

effort to downplay in on the play the threats of the coronavirus crisis here in the united states however it's also fair and must be said that specifically governor andrew cuomo from new york and new york itself as soon as aware of what is going to come heading their way in terms of this crisis is really draconian and fast measures into play here however whatever you hear from the governor in the next few days or in the last few days in terms of numbers project what they need this is the beginning of a crisis new york is already an epicenter but it is the beginning of what they're looking at here we're talking about have of the cases in the united states being in new york why is the infection rate so high you have medical authorities have they given us an explanation. no not really it is because like almost every other. metropolitan super metropolitan area of new york is the one in

america of course that the cities where business for open open for business travel still happen not just international travel from tourists which ceased then after the europe and chinese travel band bought it domestically also so. that's how you create help but let's not forget california has a big problem to l.a. and other metropolitan areas in the united states louisiana new orleans will be one of the next one that's what the experts. and fun we know the number of americans filing claims for unemployment benefits shot to a record high last week more than 3000000 and the economy before this pandemic hit the economy was doing very well is the u.s. is it prepared to deal with this. absolutely right you send it right there records records unemployment 1st initial am apartment claims just isn't one

week 3200000 and something else this is up from 280000 just before corona virus hit the united states so the stimulus package 2 trillion dollars sounds great is good because it's better than nothing but all the experts say it's just a band-aid for now and everybody is expecting there has to be more to come to get this economy which is in shock right now out of the state's rights to funds humans with the latest in washington tonight stefan thank you. well here in europe the european parliament in brussels is debating special measures to cushion the economic impact of the pandemic and e.u. leaders they have been meeting via video conference to discuss steps to mitigate the crisis but in a speech to lawmakers european commission president are full of an ally and expressed her dismay at member states lack of solidarity including decisions to close their borders when europe really needed an 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 share whether you win 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 success for you see 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 on this very clear firm words there i think is now to our correspondent here of mountains he is following developments for us in brussels good evening to you georg give me we had a pretty strong condemnation there by the european commission president where

exactly does she see the lack of solidarity tonight. arrive or looks like we are having technical problems with the signal there to brussels we certainly apologize for that we will try to come back if we can. well the coronavirus posies a particular danger to the thousands of people who are living in greece's overcrowded migrant camps in facilities on lesbos and other greek islands tens of thousands of refugees are packed together in filthy conditions with little health care and i'll break of coronavirus would be devastating. loss a few days ago migrants so facemasks offering protection to others in the camps hand as well as new arrivals now that the island is in lockdown. built a house 3020000 people live in this camp now it's cut off from the outside world.

sees up from doctors without borders says his organization has long been calling for an evacuation and now things are much worse they know they are trapped and. to protect them against a virus and that's another issue so there is a real true it will be a medical and humanitarian catastrophe. but there's also the fear that is going on there we might make. hygiene is a big problem here and with social distancing virtually impossible any infection would spread extremely rapidly there are just 6 intensive care beds in the island's main town the very weak and sick including chronically ill children would need to be transported to the mainland germany's s.p.d. party has appealed for action this is. germany and some of the european nations have offered to start by taking in around 1500 people mainly unaccompanied or sick

children so. it's just an initial step and it now needs to happen very quickly. the european commission is responsible for coordinating it all and evacuation would be quick to organize says migration expert to get. 800000 beds in hotels in a grace with only around 7000 in use 10000 people on the islands could be accommodated on the mainland the international organization for migration is now building temporary safer camps to move people to yet so far there's been no evacuation it's time for european solidarity says canals those with refugee status living on the mainland could be taken in by other e.u. countries with all the accompanying health care protection they offer. i mean p eric not caught has been on lies the last several weeks he's been documenting the

inhumane conditions of the camps just as the e.u. commission must collude night the quick evacuation of people from refugee camps to individual member countries and we must work out how to ensure that hygiene and medical standards are right he had to the system not. the e.u. commission says it hopes that countries will be able to begin taking in children within the next few weeks i want to go back now to the story of big shame on you europe coming today from the european commission president about the lack of solidarity in this pandemic crisis is good since he's following developments for us in brussels georg we did we had a pretty strong condemnation there today where those are sort of underlying where does she see this lack of solidarity now. let me give you 2 examples brand one is the export of those essential masks but also protective gear for doctors and that export it did not take place so it's

really for instance needed those mosques and they did not get them from a fellow you member state but in the end they got them from china another example is the closure of national borders at a time of crisis creating traffic jams risking the flow the frequent flow of of goods in the internal market and that is why i was at a fund of mine is that let's coordinate all of this let's make a european stockpile that's also make sure we close the extra all borders so that internal borders can remain ok those are her suggestions what came out of the video conference today were there any solutions that are. it looks like we're having a rout here over the financial means to help in the corona crisis in other words help the economy there's a draft a conclusion of this virtual summit and in it it says the european stability mechanism should be used and finance ministers should look into that there is

however no mentioning off so-called corona bonds or mutual bonds in the e.u. because behind the scenes already in the netherlands but also germany said they do not want these bonds they still believe that nations in europe can get that from the debt market so they they are still stable and so those means are not necessary yet and the italian prime minister in the meantime has already said he has rejected those draft conclusions and he has given the e.u. 10 days to come up with an adequate plan how to financially secure the future of europe yeah it seems like we're going from one crisis to the next at the moment here mountains on the story for us in brussels new york thank you. as in sports news german football teams that played in this season's champions league are putting 20000000 euros in a fund to help other clubs in germany in cases of financial hardship triggered by

the pandemic munich rb leipzig by your labor who's in and because you don't win are 2 waves media revenue expected from the german football league for the coming season however the funds will only be for clubs in the top 2 divisions the german football league's executive committee is to decide on the criteria for distribution . while people around the globe know the code 19 coronavirus not many will be aware of a much smaller code vid in mexico this bengal tiger named there you see the cub was born in mexico do a few days ago one of the fortunate name his carers say that he took everyone by surprise no one knew that he was coming when his mom and the 8 year old tigris was rescued evolved to the end of. a pandemic and a baby. and. i don't get you can always get the w.

news on the go just download our out from google play or from the app store that would give you access to all the latest news from around the world as well as push notifications for any breaking news if you are part of a new story you can also use the app to send does photos and videos when you see news happening. this is e.w. news i'm burnt off i'll be back at the top of the hour with more world news followed by the day it's a night continuing coverage of the pandemic moving from europe to north america. combating the corona pandemic. where does research stand. what are scientists learning.

how does a virus spread. through the. weekly radio show is called spectrum if you would like to tell me more information on the clone a virus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast. your parkour can also find us and. science. on trees. a simple message yes a simple solution or 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. and those are the kinds of questions we want to answer in this. 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 diligently and managed to flatten the curve here's how south korea did it. a south korean hospital has created a new system for testing patients suspected of suffering from the corona virus kovac 19 after an initial consultation patients and to read booth to have samples taken and talked to

a medical technician using an intercom. so young he on had developed a fever and other cold like symptoms and decided to get a test just to be safe. manyang a boarder if you don't know that you have it the pandemic spirits even if you're a little anxious it's good to have a test at 1st i was scared when i had about it but it wasn't as painful as i thought and it was actually kind of interesting. to do this are 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. what got you quieted the introduction of the system patients were treated in large negative pressure aims which take a long time to sterilize and ventilate it's inefficient and doctors and nurses had to meet people face to face and were nervous about exposure and tie it this physical separation is safe and enables print 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 so korea has battled the corona virus outbreak despite fewer coronavirus cases in so 3 in recent days medical intern pocked and sue 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 overseed necessary treatment so if you have even a little fever or suspected symptoms it's recommended that you go to the hospital and get tested or condone throughputs. after examining foul zones of patients drive through and 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 immunologists at the university of reading in the u.k. welcome 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 solid pulls 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 resource 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 of this little plastic 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 peas 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 an 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 began 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 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 coke at 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 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 hampshire owns a promise 1st it's examining the effects of a stablished anti-malarial drug song coronavirus symptoms that each oh sponsor 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 summers byron a soap 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. before we let you go we step away from the sobering world of tests and vaccines to indulge 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 that world wide it's a beef burger in a green tea stand by or shaped by the restaurant owner is there lighted with his

creation he says business is good and no 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 but chocolate easter bunnies a decorated with little face masks. and that was our d.w. covert 19 special for more ado check out our social media channels i'm john allen thank you for watching and stay healthy everyone. in africa. in the morning she's a student in the afternoon a reporter you landed in iran is taking your camera works on. in her free time she goes out and reports on even logical issues in her home country south africa it makes me people aware and it makes them and wants to take initiative and join us in

a vehicle for. the next. just cause my story. on the people who planned me.

dedicated to me. i am not too dumb to come. on my secrets. of man to my cities days for centuries and accompanied my country to its finest hour. until the day i mean. not down to the. stance of a few again. it's no secret that our planet's resources are dwindling on the climate crisis is real that's why i'll show it. off as ideas on how we can protect our environment.