pair of the process but the really remarkable thing is that all this is being done in one day and many critics of the government are remarking that well it was supposed to be about giving back control to the u.k. parliament to only have a day or half a day for the house of commons for scrutiny a lot of m.p.'s in this debate have been mocked that it's just fooling short of what they really want terry over to you in brussels the european commission and council of signed off on the deal e.u. leaders gave their approval a few days ago but it's still being called a provisional application of the agreement why is that that's right william and that's because as very good explained had happened in london the european parliament said we're not doing that when it became clear that the agreement was going to be concluded only in the final days of the year the european parliament said that's simply not enough time to give due process due scrutiny to the more than $1200.00 page agreement and they said we're only going to look at it in

january and it may only come up for a vote in march no one's really threatening to to nix the deal no one wants to go through all these months and months of negotiations again but the parliament is saying hey we have the right to look this over before we say it's ok i think what. lawmakers in london were complaining about is fair you know this is months and months in the making and why would you have only a couple of days to that to then say that that it's a good deal and that you will have sufficient oversight of it so yeah that's going to delay the final final approval of the brics a deal for a couple more months beer get we heard earlier boris johnson say bracks that the deal is not the end but a beginning rather churchillian of him in a rather ominous of people know the history of that quote it's referring to so what is this statement really mean in reality. well i mean this is the day that boris johnson obviously is celebrating himself as the man

who accomplished something that's historical and for him it's all about regaining so rinty and for him it's about you know being with this person who promised that he would be able to get an agreement with the e.u. that's basically paves the way for the future and that's i think what he's alluding to he is saying that this is a basis for the e.u. and the u.k. to to cooperate on what he's not saying is the trade offs and that's what critics are all remarking. the great city is have have not done historically and boris johnson and his government have not and yes this is an agreement that is good to move forward it voids for example really hard breaks and that would be catastrophic catastrophic for the u.k. economy but still economically the u.k. will be worse off because this immediate trading partner there will be new barriers

and that these trade offs that haven't been made clear and obviously this is a day where boris johnson doesn't want to talk about the trade offs but he wants to talk about his accomplishment and this is what he means with that all right and london terry shoals and brussels as always thank you very much. the european union has struck an investment deal with china after 7 years of talks the e.u. has hailed the accord as a major win for automakers and other european companies seeking to do business with beijing as it will give them greater access to chinese markets but critics accuse brussels of ignoring human rights concerns and risking a rift with washington we'll have more in business coming up right after this program. the united kingdom has become the 1st country in the world to authorize the corona virus vaccine developed by astra zeneca and oxford university it's the 2nd vaccine to receive emergency authorization from u.k.

authorities after the beyond pfizer shot trial data suggest the latest vaccine is less effective but easier to store and transport authorities say they plan to start rolling it out within days the u.k. is struggling with a surge in virus cases that's threatening to overwhelm hospitals here in germany there's a registered more than a 1000 coronavirus deaths in a single day for the 1st time since the pet demick began the country's public health institute says that's partly down to a delay in reporting because of the christmas holidays but new cases have remained high throughout december especially among the elderly and it's feared the number of daily deaths could climb even more in the coming weeks. bully record bringing some criminal in germany more work than they can handle despite weeks of lockdown measures germany has registered its highest daily coronavirus death toll

since the beginning of the pandemic. because it's believed if you do the numbers show how brutally is this virus still strikes us that we're still very far away from any kind of normality. age and since it. considering the situation i don't see how we can return to how things were before the lockdown as hard as it is this also applies to new year's eve so this has to be the quietest new year's eve that chairman you can remember this is torture and. they persist in 3 high caseload is putting enormous pressure on the health system compared to many other european countries germany experienced a relatively low number of deaths in the spring but december has been the deadliest month of the pandemic so far. schools restaurants and many shops will remain shut until at least january 10th the restrictions are likely to be extended by

chancellor angela merkel and the state premiers next week. but there is hope on the horizon. we're over what we want to do our best to fight this pandemic and to eliminate it from the world. you know you already. these seniors are some of the 1st to benefit as germany gradually rolls out its vaccination campaign $60000.00 people in the country have received the jab so far but most of the population will have to wait months to be vaccinated. large new year's celebrations prohibited and many cultural venues looking set to remain closed for a while yet the outdoors is. taking up a new place in people's lives helping to take the edge off of this winter's melancholy. let's bring in to be a skirt right now he's the director of the institute for public health at charlotte

a hospital in berlin next to the program even with tighter restrictions and months of experience treating patients what's causing so many people to die right now well the numbers unfortunately have been expected we had a very high number of people who got infected tooth we soko it so unfortunately these numbers where expect that it will continue to see it is high numbers until eventually the lock down will show adoption in the number of cases in the hospitals and the number of people who die we saw in germany doing fairly well in the springtime it's a different situation now even though germany never had the full kind of restrictions that we saw in other european countries what makes this time so much different from earlier in the pandemic when i think the situation is somewhat different so in the spring we you know respect that there is frictions now we are certainly used to and maybe are not taking it so seriously because the spring goes

so light for germany and now we see the consequences so everybody needs to understand that this is serious they have to stay home there we have to reduce the number of people they see to a minimum the absolute minimum until this is over. tell us a little more about the role that you and your colleagues play in helping germany find its way out of this park area situation. well we're trying to have you do numbers daily and trying to see what models will help us to predict what will go on in the next days or the next weeks but we also have landed it's very difficult to really make predictions that are valid so we hope to assist the d. politicians and the health authorities to making decisions to reduce the number of infections and reduce the number who are severely ill and eventually die hopefully so these numbers will as suddenly continue to be high as i mentioned before so we're trying to assist this process as much as we can dr to be

a scourge of charities institute for public health here in berlin thanks very much thank you for having me arjun tina's senate has voted to legalize abortion and a landmark bill that could have representations across latin america argentina is the largest country in the region to make abortion legal but the catholic church plays a dominant role there and the issue has polarized society. that said nervous yet full of heart after decades of campaigning and setbacks these women anxiously await news from the argentinian senate. i do 12 hours of debate lawmakers approve a bill that will legalize abortion in argentina up to the 14th week of pregnancy. we have as you know very excited it is a historic day there's nothing more to say it is a right and we're going for more this is just begun. there must be no mother now

too excited i can't believe it i swear it's crazy. but. it's a victory for the women's rights movement just 2 years after lawmakers rejected a similar bill. until now to abortions were only permitted in cases of rape or when the mother's health was at risk leading many women to seek out dangerous illegal terminations. president alberto fernandez had made reintroducing them or one of his campaign promises gifting the pro-choice movement precious momentum. that this is the 9th time a bill to legalize abortion was presented in congress over the past 15 years so it's an issue that's been on the agenda for many many years and that in the most recent years since 2018 i would say has taken

a lot of attention the antiabortion campaign hopes that argentina would keep restrictions on abortion like most of its neighbors the continent has some of the most restrictive laws in the world the catholic church remains highly influential and opposed the move. francis who is from argentina urged against passing the bill saying that every outcast is a child of god you. i thought the senate activists celebrated their victory but stressed that the fought the women's rights is far from over. and a reminder of the top story we're following for you british prime minister boris johnson has signed off on the trade deal between the european union and the united kingdom be used top officials earlier put their signatures on the 1200 page agreement in brussels.

coming up after the break business news with then we'll have more on that e.u. china trade deal and i'll be back with more headlines at the top of the hour thanks very much for watching. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus update nineteen's. on t w. can soon consulates of closing cinemas and creativity changing out to.

galleries when the actual and musicians of the full known line the artistic world the culture come. no matter how hard. a look back on a challenging year to date on awesome culture on d w. using a u.v. lamp to kill the coronavirus that's just one light bulb moment in a multitude of responses to prove that 19 clooney was repurposed hand sanitizer at the beginning of the pandemic the speed of innovation and the corona virus could be a game changer experts say it could revolutionize global health care allowing us to come up with solutions that could change health care delivery. they

say a necessity is the mother of invention the coronavirus pandemic has thrown that into stark relief from innovations enabling us to live with the realities of the virus to devices that make it safe to action possible here's the story of 2 entrepreneurs who say a diagnosis is just a breath away. rather christoph and thomas wolfe have a vision they want to return some normality to this carbon 19 times for months the been working on a breath test but can identify the novel coronavirus they're now confident it works . taken in august from a technical point of view this device can get to areas where normally only a dog can sniff things out. a device that's almost as sensitive as a dog's noles the technique is similar to a breathalyzer for alcohol. this is a stimulus when what we have here is a sterile mouthpiece. and you take off the packaging and then what happens if you

blow into the mouthpiece and you just breathe out. in there start up the brothers develop highly sensitive sensor technology from a spectrum meters pull industry and labs for a new type of diagnosis in real time within the time it's a can we can see all sorts of things using breath analysis like whether a patient had coffee yesterday afternoon or not we can identify his nutritional status and we can see different amino acids different fatty acids all of this from the breath breath as a direct window into the human body. the brothers believe it could recognize carbon 19 other researchers also say breath analysis could work in principle to test for the corona virus. the challenge is to is to get the. methods that you're an on the the way the equipment is used to chew on and the analytical technique of mice with verified biomarkers are

reliable. once we've proven that then you have a curve igniting breath test ready to go conventional swab tests are reliable but often only carried out when the infection has been there for a while and a result usually takes 2 days the breath test detects metabolic changes in breathing caused by the virus while it is not yet 100 percent reliable it does give an immediate result. the researchers believe that they will be able to deploy the tests as early as next summer in places like football stadiums. passengers could also be tested at airports before check in the accuracy of the test is currently around 80 percent however the researchers are expecting efficiency to increase significantly in the meantime a lot of detailed work remains to be done. people are complicated and you're looking for a small signal in a snowstorm a blizzard of information. but we've found we've found the signals we think are

helpful young christophe and thomas both originally developed their test for very different types of bad gnosis one problem with a cover 1000 tests is that they have not yet been able to carry out studies on patients with the virus they are hoping for to going to get access to the processors access to resources to allow us to carry out a validation study on the site in a hospital or an airport test center and with that it becomes very easy to determine whether this would be a way to bring back some normality to people's. breath analyzers could be a way to detect carbon 1000 infections much faster than before. matthew harris joins us now he's a clinical senior lecturer and public health at the imperial college london matthew so glad you can join us now you've written in the scientific journal nature about how the response to covered 19 has been distinguished by so-called frugal

innovations what exactly does that mean well thank you through litigation really is the term that we give to the kind of innovation we see in the resource constrained so situations of extraordinary time pressure or situations where we don't have the kind of resources that we normally like to have when we where we develop health care innovations and the word frugal oftentimes is referred to as sort of cheap or good enough innovation that actually frugal innovation is health care to patients that's actually as effective as the kind of innovation it would normally say but just in a way that is far more affordable far more sustainable maybe if you are sort of complexity or functionality but that gets the job and undercoat it of course we've seen around the world some extraordinary difficult situations at national level in terms of exposing the fragilities in our healthcare systems but also the real

increase in healthcare demands and it really has necessitated a new type of innovating in innovating that pace rapidly using resources that we just find around us so kind of improvising if you are. this is the kind of innovation that we call frugal innovation so it's about reacting quickly using what you have but did how then examples of what a frugal innovation could be. well absolutely in the early days of the covert response we saw insincerity helping countries and really interesting examples of frugal innovations so for example where there was a lack of personal protective equipment we saw a clinician's improvised the use of simple acetate sheets the kind of such as a she's that you'd use for overhead projectors in the old days and by simply putting some holes in either side of us they sheeting threading some ribbon on either side those became very effective face vices to protect not only the

clinician but also the patients in front of them when they were interfacing and this was of course extremely cheap and actually very very effective since then baseball has a vote and become more sophisticated but it was a very good example of a frugal innovation at a time another good example of innovating at a pace was the construction of hospitals and on the 10 days in china actually eventually also in the u.k. where i'm from we saw the construction or repurchasing at least of conference sensors ensued into intensive care units and hospitals also in very very short amounts of time as a sort of idea of repurchasing the resources you have but also very very quickly a characteristic of frugal innovation now that the crisis has focused minds and mobilize so much in terms of responses as you've told us there is also kind of guy downside to this kind of concentration of response to the crisis. well

i think the pope it obviously has recorded a deviation of resources from other health care to focus our attention on covert response and as a result some other areas have if you like suffered in terms of research going into them and also the health care delivery the different clinical conditions i don't think there's a downside to frugal innovation and i think it's been a really revealing how we've been able to develop such effective health care responses in a short period of time. without scrimping on safety checks or effectiveness or clinical effectiveness or for the patients that we serve so i don't see a downside to through innovation which tends to be for fordable the healthcare systems as long as the necessary checks and balances are in place to ensure the safety of those devices or technologies you've written that this kind of innovation

could lead to a leveling in global health care equality what does that look like. what is the level in the sense that it has made us really reflect on the fragilities in the health systems even in the high income countries settings and it's made us pay much more attention to the kind of innovations that arise from the low income countries it's something we've been updating for for many years and what code is doing is making us pay more attention to settings that traditionally we haven't really noticed in terms of healthcare innovation thank you matthew harriss there talking about putting human resource lowness at the center of arc over 1000 response is a clinical senior lecturer and public health at the imperial college london thank you for your insights. and now it's time for one of your ascent and questions about the coronavirus our science correspondent derek williams is ready with announcer. taking into account to patients sex and age what do the statistics say about

complications. one of the clearest pieces of information that's come out of the statistics is that from the age of about 40 on women in general are a lot less likely than men to have severe outcomes data from both the c.d.c. and the european center for disease prevention and control a reveal how stark the difference is this graphic for example emphasizes how much more likely men of a certain age are to end up in the hospital or the i.c.u. numbers of men are represented by the blue bar and a numbers of women by the red one in europe men between 40 and 80 make up around 3 quarters of all intensive care cases and recorded deaths after 80 the split is more even but that's almost certainly due to the simple fact that a lot fewer men lived at that age so statistically the chances are

a lot higher that in the over eighty's a woman is going to get code 19 ben a man is going to get it there's a lot of speculation about why and there doesn't seem to be a single reason that accounts for all of the discrepancy and several factors are likely playing roles we know though that people who have diabetes or high blood pressure or heart disease are at greater risk of severe outcomes if they contract to cope at 19 and aging men are more likely to have those co-morbidities than aging women are but another possible contributing factor involves immune response the male and female immune systems. different experts say because on their 2nd x. chromosome women have another copy of many of the genes that are involved in fighting off disease it's been theorized that's also why women are more likely to

develop certain auto immune diseases than men but in this case it could be helping them keep covert 19 or it's medical ramifications more effectively it bad that's hard to prove though. and that's all from us thank you very much for watching and stay safe.

every day. for us and for our planet. in the ideas is on its way to bring you more conservation. how do we make cities screen or how can we protect animals and their habitats what to do with the waste we can make a difference by choosing reforestation over the 1st recycling largest most of the

smart new solution superstate said in our. earth is truly unique and we know that uniqueness is what allows us to live and survive good why do you assume the important issues to global 3000 on g.w. go on. this is state of the union africa with a special base stop edition featuring stories were also asked.