tv DW News Deutsche Welle April 22, 2020 9:00pm-9:14pm CEST
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this is g w news live from berlin tonight the coronavirus the sick and the starving a warning that the pandemic could cause famine of biblical proportions. millions of civilians living in conflict started he says including many women and children face being pushed to the brink of starvation the specter of fandom to south threatening to destroy what crops they have left in a country where hunger always talked to day the knife after years of civil war the majority of south sudanese are already in
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a state of food crisis now things look set to get even worse last year we had to feed 5000000 people due to fighting and flooding already in 2020 we've had locust invasions and now there is a covert 19 pandemic which we predict could almost double the people in the queue hunger by the end of 2020 across the world. and those numbers are shocking we're also told the rate of a hunger pandemic and additional of $130000000.00 people. could be pushed to the breaking story they should by the end of 2020 that's a total of $265000000.00 people. government don't downs are taking that told in brazil it's estimated that up to 40000000 informal one peers have been dragged into extreme poverty handouts here in rio de janeiro are keeping people fed
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. others are doing whatever they can to survive. them like they do feasibly honestly it's very difficult even with selling food in order to survive but my daughter annoying me we're out of work and we're doing this selling food and then i can see. pocono is ations like the un's world food program op pleading for more funds but with so many countries now battling for economic survival plus a lack of global leadership the fear is that a humanitarian catastrophe could be closer than ever. now from a viral pandemic to a hunger. i'm joined tonight by the world food program's bettina luscher she is the organization's chief spokeswoman here in germany but seen it's good to see you why will millions more people go hungry because of the coronavirus connect the dots for
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us. see look what's happening all around the world look what's happening in western countries and then multiply that by also what and you see what economic turmoil is happening around the world. you know so many people are losing their jobs and our concern is that our data have found that the number of acutely hungry people could go up to more than a quarter 1000000000 people why is that because the virus is going around the globe legace and now me of suffering men women and children that we have especially concerned about those that are in refugee camps really very very close to each other how do you do social distancing in a refugee camp so we're working on that but the single that also really worries us as we this year is the world food program have to feed $100000000.00 people without
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us they would die and we urgently need funds to do this job to feed those 100000000 people who are already suffering from conflicts and wars and climate change and everything now on top of that is the coronavirus and this will make everything much much worse how is the funding situation for the world food program your funding source is it is it stable. well we have to beg for every dollar and every euro and we're doing that as we speak and that's why my voice was in the u.n. security council you know we not only we need to act today and the world for a program doesn't only just do the food assistance we also need money for order just a response we take care of the horse humanitarian community we will aid some $120.00 countries we are chartering ships we're chartering planes were flying in aid workers we're flying in nurses doctors masks ventilators we're building
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a field hospital it's all of that needs to be paid for to and that has to happen now it cannot happen in a month it has to happen today tomorrow this week and for that we need $350000000.00 and so far we have received just a quarter of that we know that many humanitarian issues there being to go to the beyond is with us as the world deals with this pandemic what is your message to world governments tonight. this time we are all in this this is not a crisis somewhere out over there out there somewhere over there very very far away this is affecting all of us and we are all staying home with oil trying to help each other but if you live in africa how in the middle east in a war zone you have you don't have the luxury is that we have and if we do not help that i know there will be how do you go pandemic and that is such a horrible never before seen situation but it is our very natural self interest to
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help our neighbors they are suffering much more than we do if we don't help them the pandemic will get out of control and the virus will come right back at us so we have to stand together the world needs to stand together thank you has never before . seen spokesperson here in berlin with the world food program. thank you thank you grand. well here's a look now at some of the other stories that are making headlines around the world the british government says $759.00 more people have died from 19 in u.k. hospitals the official total death toll now stands at more than 18000 but the country's financial times newspaper alleges the government has undercounted deaths it puts the figure at more than double at 40000 deaths flash flooding in the yemeni city of aden has left at least 14 people dead and dozens injured many streets have
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been blocked in buildings destroyed by mud and debris the country's already struggling with the effects of years of conflict and cholera outbreaks. worldwide cope with 19 cases surged past 2 and a half 1000000 the global race to develop a vaccine is gaining fresh urgency today the german drug firm bio intact want to prove all to begin the country's 1st human clinical trials of a possible vaccine there are currently dozens of potential candidates in development in europe china and the u.s. but health officials say it will still be months before a treatment is available. governments across the world have different strategies to battle it undamaged but they all agree on one thing let me say when the global public health crisis caused by covert 19 will not be completely over until
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science finds a vaccine in the long run the best way to defeat corona virus is through a vaccine. the regulations will remain until we have a vaccine and medicine not mainly until we find a fax. machine but. finding a vaccine is crucial to ending the crisis around the world scientists are making progress a pharmaceutical firm in the german city of mines has become the 1st company in germany to receive a permit to conduct human trials. it's me this is only the 5th clinical trial in the world in the quest to find a vaccine against and this installs it is a milestone. in britain scientists are also racing ahead researchers at oxford university plan to start human trials on thursday the scientists here had a head start they'd already been working on other coronaviruses long before this latest outbreak began when this new virus emerged there was already work going on
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here in oxford the mothers crying or virus in a back seat was being trialled humans and so what happened was the genetic code for the new corona virus was discovered in january of this year and it was possible to go back to that genetic code make these new vaccines very rapidly global investment is high in the race to find a vaccine the u.k. government has invested 20000000 pounds in this study alone at the same time they want to invest in production capacity so the once a vaccine is available it can be distributed quickly researchers in switzerland say they are confident they will soon have a vaccine they hope to start means higher population by october a very ambitious plan most researchers believe a viable vaccine won't be available until next year at the earliest. well i'm joined tonight by professor over live it is working on the development of
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a vaccine at the harvard medical school in the united states professor levy it's good to have you on the program there is a race for a coronavirus vaccine at the moment talk to me a little bit about where you are in this race in which phase of a vaccine development is your team at the moment. well our team here at the purser's and vaccines program at harvard medical school in boston children's hospital is really taking a very different approach from the other groups you know normally vaccine development would start with developing an antigen something that the body would respond to as a foreign agent and form antibodies against and then tested in mice for example and then in larger animals and eventually in human trials in our group what we do is put the human element 1st because there are species specific effects and we test the if affects of candidate vaccines outside the body we say in vitro in culture
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and we do so particularly using blood collections from elderly individuals who are most susceptible to severe coronavirus so we want to develop a vaccine that would be effective in those who are at risk of more severe disease what does that mean then for human trials in your development did they come later then for example than what we're seeing here in germany with bio wintec and pfizer . they may well come later but we believe that our vaccine might not be the 1st one there but maybe one that is optimized to best protect the elderly we've seen it before if you look at influenza immunization for example a high proportion of elderly individuals do not mount a sufficiently strong response to the flu vaccine of course they should be getting the flu vaccine it's very important for them it's lifesaving but we wish a higher proportion was giving a robust response a we're working with small molecules called adjutants that boost an immune response and we it turns out that adjutants work differently in different age groups so
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we're making sure we build a vaccine that would work best in those who suffer the worst disease professor you know you talk about a vaccine that works best is it possible that in our haste to find a vaccine that we could possibly have something on the market let's say next year that is not optimal and that may not help as many people as we would like are are we looking at the future maybe at 1st with 2nd rate vaccines being the 1st ones on the market. well none of them are 2nd rate i don't want to disparage any of the efforts there must be over $100.00 groups around the world and probably invent many more and we wish each group the very best you know this is this is not a game people are dying every day around the world in our community here in boston as well so we wish all the groups the very best and as you know trials have already begun in the united states and around the world and even if we see here in a few months that these trials are positive in the sense that the vaccine appears
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safe and induced in anybody response there's still the matter of how do you scale this solution to make hundreds of millions or billions of doses this is where we think an admin can be helpful because an adjutant may allow you to create a vaccine with less of the expensive part the antigen the protein for example and and more of the advent of this is typically a small molecule that's less costly to produce so therefore michael economic reasons that an accident might be a solution to scale a vaccine and it also might induce a more durable response so that you don't need repeat dosing so this is an approach we're taking of course there are other groups looking at how humans as well but we believe our group to be unique in 1st modeling the human immune response outside the body and focusing on the elderly well we will certainly be monitoring your progress professor and we wish you all the best as well as all the teams that are working now on a vax c. a professor from leaving from boston medical school joining us tonight professor thank you michel spittle thank you thank you. this is
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