slower timeline on vioxx facts in approval especially as immunization programs have already begun in britain and the united states but the european commission has defended its approach with multiple covered vaccines being developed at breakneck speed the commission says its main concern is fostering public trust to covert vaccines are currently in line for approval by the european medicines agency developed by biotech pfizer on monday ana they've already gone through extensive testing 1st in the lab and then on human volunteers in clinical trials these studies have to meet standards set by international regulators and they provided data on the vaccines quality safety on the fitzy once the vaccines were successfully tested on peasants' of people they were officially submitted to the am a firm approval. is usually takes years for a vaccine to be developed and authorised but the e.u.

has accelerated the process one way it's done this is by starting to review the vaccine data while the trials were still underway during the review process teams of experts assess a vaccine is quality by examining being greets and how it's produced. a vaccine can only be authorized if the benefits far outweigh the risks. then day international governments to decide which groups will receive the 1st doses when. all doctor. is an intensive care specialist he's also president of the german interdisciplinary association of critical care and emergency medicine welcome to day doubly so this latest a hard lock down the shuttle to last until the 10th of january what effect do you think it will have. yes we hope that it will slow down the very high infectious raids we observed the last week. and we

expect that the measures now taken moon will show the effect in $7.00 to $10.00 to $14.00 days but for the intensive care units the measures which are now. being realized from wednesday on we will see the effect on the intensive care units in the beginning of january so it will last 2 to 3 weeks that we see anything on the high pressure which is at the moment last thing on the intensive care units all over germany wrong or even someone like cologne or burley and given those increasing numbers it's sensible to ease those hard luck down for 2 days over christmas. we. we apply and we always pointed out that we do thing that it is not the good

idea to lose in these restrictions and we've. peeled to the inhabitants of germany to the population to stay 2 very very restricted context and that they shall not invited to grandma and father because the risk to transmit ask of 2 in the setting is quite high even if they do so they should apply it to the age a class. rules to keep this tends to use the mouse know of. things to continue to do to protect the miles in the nose and to perform the hand hygiene so i think these measures they should take but we appeal to the population not to lose the history controls i think that

see the most important message at this point one of the purposes of course of the locked out is to avoid hospitals being overwhelmed what is the critical caste situation in germany at the moment. yes we have in germany intensive care registry of the german association intensive care and this shows that the overall overall in germany we have acquired bad openness still open but this only applies for hospitals which are not the maximal hospitals and so we fear that in some regions like berlijn or in other regions with very big pressure with co with 19 patients the shortage of i.c.u. beds is getting to critical point so at the moment we can cope with this situation but as you are still in the reports mansion and other servants as

hospice was at the moment beginning to transfer patients from their. other regions which have still capacities left and i think if we would not have did close down from tomorrow on then it would have been a very very very severe outcome in january so it's quiet riot and perhaps it was 5 past 12 to do this lockdown and i'm quite convinced of that thank you so much for joining us doctor dr yan senses president of the german interdisciplinary association of critical care and emergency medicine i think you are. we'll take a look now at some of the other stories making news around the world british and european union negotiators are making some progress in negotiations over breakfast of holding some sources close to the talks germany's e.u. ambassador said a trade deal could be possible by the end of the week that he goes asians have

previously appeared to have stalled with a deal and looking increasingly unlikely the current deadline for talks is the 31st of december. u.s. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell has congratulated joe biden on his election win in a speech on the senate floor the republican leader ended weeks of silence over president trump's defeat it came a day after the electoral college officially confirmed biden's victory. and russian president vladimir putin has also congratulated mr biden following the electoral college vote in a kremlin statement mr putin said he was there ready for interaction with the president elect he was that mr putin was the last a major foreign leader turk knowledge mr blair's victory in the last election. president alpha condé has been sworn in for a 3rd term the 82 year old won violently disputed elections in october he became the country's 1st democratically elected leader in 2010 but critics accuse him of

cracking down on dissent and undermining the constitution. today marks exactly 25 years since football transfers changed to forever little known belgian player john mark bazerman went to court to argue that footballers who were out of contract should not be traded for transfer fees he won and the slew of top players including by munich's top star have since taken advantage of the rule. john mark bozeman was an unremarkable player and it does impact on the game of football was enormous the belgian challenge football's transfer system and the european court of justice ruled he was right players should be allowed to move clubs for free at the end of a contract was. bozeman paid the price risk court action club shied away from signing him and legal costs left him with financial and then personal problems today he says he just wanted footballers to be treated like over employees. secured

using read years earlier minutes on the from 995 players could leave their clubs because they were seen as workers. horsemen ruling represented freedom full stop. for. he opened the door for a host of big names to move clubs for free was probably the most famous bosman signing being robert let under. the left bought one for buy in munich at the end of his contract in 2014 and has never stopped scoring since the former general secretary of world player union 5th row says football owes bozeman a huge debt. the freedom at the end of the contract for a player was of course for all the players in the world. a gift and that was only because john marbles one had the guts to stand up against me for at that moment and i think that we have to be very thankful to him. because

to be honest after that never happened again john mark bosman never won much on the field but off it he changed football forever. now the pandemic has forced germany's conservative see the new to postpone its election of a new party leader until january stepping into the shoes of any long serving party leader is a daunting task at the best of times but 3 men think they have got what it takes and they've been holding their 1st debate. so time at uncle america party as it gears up to choose its new leader in january and meet the 3 contenders hoping to lead the c.d.u. maybe term many into the post match era i mean let's sit them after ally and traditionalist. 59 years old my name is army last year and i'm a passionate christian democrat. caught me patient matts

a former makah adversary who means her when saying things like this this is politics nobody is a replaceable. and then there's no better fuckin initially the wild card is beginning to look like you might have a chance. nothing will be as it used to be we need to rebuild everything. as head of the foreign affairs committee of it can is most concerned that europe could be the big loser from the corona crisis it is in the us we see that asia above all china but also other asian countries are already more dynamic again even in this phase of the pandemic and we are we're about to see a big global competition. this was more of a political beauty contests than every debate the current front runner fruitless matt says the concerns about asia he sees germany's christian democrats called on

to unite europe. given the tough with events the question whether we want to play in the local legal the champions league and i want the european union to play in the top league as state premier of north rhine-westphalia i mean last it sounded more like a man of the people he was the only one around the table with corona crisis responsibility he's not cialis the social question must be at the center after this pandemic you must avoid companies like amazon being the big winners. under given. in the end it comes down to how much of a break from the macro era the c.d.u. party wants from its next leda $1001.00 delegates will make that choice in general . i'm not certain you're up to date i'll be back at the top off base our coronaviruses special next a good. the

fight against the coronavirus endemic. as the rate of infection in developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus update. on d w. in turn the conference or word seroquel and. i put the tough questions to those in power challenging the key players face to face it's real and hard hitting debate that goes beyond the jargon and helps us better understand what's really. holding the powerful to account getting to the truth.

that's the conflict so. testing is key to beating covert 19. genetic material from the virus can tell us who is infected to be quarantined to stop it from spreading so fast. a person's antibodies can show us who has some immunity to the virus so lockdowns can be lifted and people can get. the trade off between speed price and accuracy mean. it is good to have you with us several nations have started vaccinating their citizens but the corona virus is far from beat which means detecting it is still.

a german scientist has been developing ways to not only test many people quickly cheaply and to stop chains of infection but also to go on with their lives. is supposed to take off from munich to hamburg in about an hour travelers don't just have to show their boarding passes they also have to show a negative test for the coronavirus germany's biggest airline hopes the covert 1000 tested flights program will make passengers feel comfortable flying again during the pandemic.

the test center is just a few steps away here medical personnel take a swab and analyze it using. these work by detecting proteins on the virus surface the result is available after around 15 minutes without the. need for. the tests are produced by companies like farm act they started developing rapid tests for covert $1000.00 shortly after the start of the pandemic the 1st step is an antibody test that uses a drop of blood to determine whether a person has had previous contact with the virus or is currently infected. next comes the antigen test like the one used. it detects the virus directly i can determine whether someone could infect other people. but the. we talked about how can we make tests that will function everywhere

without the need for a large infrastructure behind let's say in the jungle or inside these days on a small island. is. the goal is to be able to test many people quickly and cheaply to stop chains of infection and to do this worldwide even in regions that do not have a well developed infrastructure. started producing large numbers of tests within a few weeks working together with a family business that usually supplies the automotive an electrical industries. this does this esteemed as one goes to the whole system can now be scaled up so we're able to produce $300000.00 units per week for farm act. so i think the moral summation put into it the more economical the whole thing also becomes in terms of production that. the tests only cost a few euros a fraction of the more common p.c. or tests that can only be evaluated not

a tree hugger. at munich airports all the passengers have now completed their coronavirus rapid tests and after a few minutes they get the results back. into. reliability is between 95 and 98 percent are currently verifying bashed by retesting each sample with a p.c.r. test is not. the tested flights concept seems well received by passengers. i think it's ok certainly as an alternative to not traveling the whole process was quick you have your results in 10 minutes you can use it to you know i don't have anything negative at this that is tested although i think it's better for the people it's better for the community we're flying here. what works for getting on a plane could also make major events such as concerts football games or just going to the cinema possible again because the coronavirus pandemic is likely to be with

us for some time to spike the availability of vaccines. so knowing whether you have caught the virus or not will remain important information of course for more on this let's bring in marcus hippy he's a biologist at the german research center for environmental health he joins me via skype from munich welcome to w. marcus when it comes to the antibody test many people of the most the most of them the most important question is does a positive test result mean i'm immune. so if you're immune to the virus this is used on an hour and cannot tell you because. if you were to say if you're immune you have to do a neutralization essay where you can prove that your antibody prevents the virus from entering your cells. until now antibody tests have not been considered particularly reliable that's why you used a new method on

a large scale study what did that look like. so that there are also some. kind of care casts that are reliable what we do. look for are more antibodies that appear later and that you see. especially what we what our method looks like was that we do that tests a regular screening test and then a confirmation test again or antibodies against 2 different proteins to. the special this is that really just specificity or 100 percent meaning that we would not be take any holes positives so weary reported through prevalence and tell us more on the result of your study we scrutinize creamed children in bavaria germany aged one to 18 years and what we found on from january 2020 through

july was a 6 fold higher prevalence of antibodies that compared. the reported cases and also happen to children that have antibodies that were as symptomatic. now does a higher incidence of antibodies in the population mean that more people are already immune to the virus so late in the 1st question and. know if this is the short answer but if you test you if you do these new trees asian studies and you can prove but specially these antibodies you're testing and that they also confer immunity then in principle this is right the more you will actually see united saying antibodies then of course the more people are in. a single antibody test without these new pretties i mean so you cannot compute. in recent weeks infection numbers have been rising to very high levels here in germany

what do you think is the reason for that. so a great bird the reason is that there are really are more infections and more or less the transmission up and got out of control not like it was during the summer with lower numbers reflect tracing was also possible this is not possible anymore and of course there's also more testing but also the positive rate goes up so it's not just the number of tests that goes up there really are more infections my guess is they have the german research center for an environmental health thank you for talking to us thank you. so we know some more about the different methods of covert testing than we did at the start of the show but there are questions remaining and that's when our science correspondent derrick williams is happy to jump in. is it possible to test positive for 19 and its

antibodies at the same time. tricky question to answer it we need a quick refresher on the terminology antibodies our immune system proteins that can be detected by what are called serial logical tests generally from blood samples if you have antibodies that are specific to covert 19 that indicates that you were exposed to the corona virus at some point in the past whether you develop symptoms or not diagnostics like antigen and p.c.r. tests on the other hand are for detecting the virus or its genetic material so they're supposed to tell you whether you have an active infection this question therefore basically boils down to can i have an active infection yet at the same time be producing detectable amounts of antibodies against it yes you can

but but finding both involves getting the timing right that's because there's some overlap between when an infection is in full swing and the ramp up of the body's immune response in general experts say it takes a patient's body between one and 3 weeks to produce detectable amounts of the different antibodies that play a key role in fighting off covert 19 researchers in new york found that even patients producing antibodies in those measurable amounts however could continue to test positive for the virus for up to 4 weeks after their symptoms resolved what the team couldn't determine though was whether the. viral genetic material was actually coming from a viable virus p.c.r. testing doesn't tell you that although that's really what you want to know it just tells you whether there are intact pieces of my role in

a sample. do you have a question for derek mall just send an e-mail to feedback english dot com and type experts in the subject line or leave a comment on our you tube channel now before we go here's a story about adapting traditions to today's reality germany's seasonal christmas markets called off due to coronavirus restrictions drive through options have been popping up across the country and car need the family theme park has been transformed into a winter wonderland complete with artificial snow mulled wine and music cars following a 2 and a half kilometer route past the stands. just craps and roasted. rules in germany the 1st will be allowed to remain open as long as the stalls only food for consumption in vehicles. just have to make sure you don't

spill any of that sticky mulled wine. thanks for watching.

i'm not proud of them they will not succeed in dividing us about not succeed in taking the people off the streets because we're tired of mr trying to show up. taking the stand global news that matters. made for mines. how the virus spread. why do we panic and ram we'll all miss them. just through the topics covered and we couldn't read your blog is called spectrum if you like and new information on the coronavirus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get it wherever you get your podcast

you can also find us and. foreign slash science. mrs do you have any news africa on the program today the agony of the parents desperately waiting for news off their children who were abducted from their school in nigeria. if this government is just then we want them to rescue our children because they have the power to do start to slow to take action because it's not their children who are being taken. for days often a kidnapping feeling is growing in the country over the governments of parents failure to protect the children and to secure their release. blasts.