stories. many computer. w. made for mines. businesses in germany brace for a longer lockdown rise in case numbers and a slow vaccine roll out of the backdrop for today's meeting between berlin in the states retailers meanwhile are pleading for faster fuller reopening. will take a closer look at one branch feeling the lockdown pain holding producers whose retail partners can't open their doors. also on the show it's investor day at exxon mobil and there's likely to be big questions on the oil majors future as renewables came or ground. floor welcome to the show i'm seeing busy in berlin it's good to

have you with us germany is expected to extend its current lockdown to march 28th that's according to a widely circulated draft document which is the basis for today's meeting between chancellor angela merkel and german state leaders business reopening are likely to be a major discussion point retailers want to pass to full store openings especially in regions where case numbers are relatively low health officials however feared new virus strains could search without caution germany's vaccination efforts have meanwhile been hampered due to delays in production and distribution. all right for more on this let's go to our financial correspondent in frankfurt chelsea delaney hi there chelsea we're healing hearing from retailers that they want full reopening and they're not really open to the idea of these sort of appointment shopping ideas or sort of half measures is that likely that they'll get that. it seems unlikely that that german

nationals today are going to pull it crete to a full reopening and this is going to certainly i or a lot of businesses that have been locked down for 234 months now today we heard from the had the industry association representing hotels and caterer saying that this is the opposite of that opening plan and it is very complicated there are a lot of proposed rules many would allow for things 3 open in one case to go under 35 or 100000 residents but there are a lot of steps and that's really not what this is for hoping for you know chelsea germany like the rest of the e.u. is falling behind on vaccinations at least when it comes to major economies around the world the u.s. and the u.k. for example with 1st doses of around 15 and 30 percent of their populations respectively israel more than half its population china there you see it comes in 3 percent lower than germany but of course the situation there with tend to is much

different very very few cases germany at 5 point one percent. you know the growing gap this growing gap between the e.u. and other nations what does that mean for businesses in these respective nations. well it means that the european business recovery is going to be much delayed a lot of businesses here and europe out then really counting on the fact that they would be able to reopen that this would start to pick up again and the summer especially for travel companies and travel to pendent economies like greece and spain they have how a lot of optimism about a recovery this year the fact that we are only at 5 percent vaccination rates that will delay a reopening of the economy were saying that now and today's discussions and that means that many businesses will be struggling for for a longer that will push more businesses to the thing brink of bankruptcy and it will delay the economic recovery for europe more broadly all right all eyes on that meeting today just as late in frankfurt thank you very much.

one bridge that's been hit hard by the lockdowns in germany the apparel industry even in normal times clothing manufacturers work hard to keep seasonal items on the shelves now there are barely any shelves to stock most boutiques remain closed and online shopping is still a work in progress to look. like all fashions most days bring collection has a pretty short shelf life yet almost the entire output of the saxony based fashion house is still in the warehouse orders from german boutiques have dried up and exports the sluggish slowly but surely more days financial resources are dwindling in this country as you can just know if this continues until easter the season is as good as dead yet again because after that cutthroat price wars and gigantic discounts all flare up. and that means profitability for us customers and the specialist traders hits rock bottom. more days c.e.o.

thomas whistler is considering selling directly to the public after the lock down straight from warehouse to customer with discounts an attempt to generate at least some kind of revenue more day is only one of 160 struggling textile and clothing manufacturers in the region the sector association wants an end to the lockdown upslope must stop the whole thing open the shops again get back to normal life give the companies the space they need to become economically viable again just like the jet stream and shopping zones are almost deserted her around $50000.00 retailers are on the edge of going bankrupt small retailers in particular simply aren't equipped to switch to online sales sales that women's fashion houses idle fell a staggering 70 percent year on year this january and february the family and company is over 100 years old it manufactures its collection in germany and sells it across europe to small and mid-sized retailers. retailers are asking why they

should order for 2021 right now as far as the numbers in their orders go the forecast is minus 50 percent. and minus 50 percent for a company of our size and probably every company our size is a gigantic problem. sidle is hoping to generate a little extra revenue by making personal protective clothing for medical staff hospitals and politicians have been asking if he can produce it yet so far he's hardly been given any firm contracts. or and shifting gears from the retail industry to the oil industry exxon mobil has its investor day today and investors are likely to have some pressing questions for the american oil nature now unlike its european rivals b.p. and shell exxon has really hasn't paid to embrace the growing renewables market but impatiens 1st strategy shift is growing among some investors the oil price shock of the pandemic has only increased their calls for the major to diversify that here's

how bad the industry was hit last year exxon mobil lost $22000000000.00 and that after recording a $14000000000.00 profit just a year earlier that wasn't alone british oil champion b.p. posting a loss last year of over $20000000000.00 and if you look at shell turnover there collapsing by 50 percent leaving the company with a pandemic based loss of almost $22000000000.00 now exxon plans to x. 15 percent of its workforce by the end of this year that's probably somewhere around $10000.00 jobs it's also promising more change in its strategy including recently bringing on an activist investor to its board and its promising other activist investor groups that it's going to do more in the future now for more on this want to talk to derek conway his legal counsel for climate focus that's an advisory group specializing in climate change and there joins me from amsterdam welcome to the show 1st of all. exxon has said that it believes that oil and gas

are still viable in the decades ahead especially as other big oil majors focus on renewables that there's still area there for it it is their business case that it's made. well if we want to hit the climate targets that the world has agreed on the piracy agreement the really isn't so we have very very little space for more oil and gas research has shown that even if we exploit all the oil and gas in the field currently in operation we already overshoot our targets so really oil and gas is yesterday's business and tomorrow's business is renewable energy green hydrogen and electric vehicles now out there to some extent b.p. and shell have embraced renewables a bit and yet investors are really sold on them so why is that when i think firstly you know b.p. and shell they're taking baby steps towards renewables but it's really only a side business so far i mean their main business is oil and gas now they're gradually trying to step away but even there then they're doing it too slowly now

unfortunately the regulatory frameworks in place are still favoring the incumbents they're still favor in oil and gas and there are governments around the world or continue continuing to subsidize fossil fuels to a massive massive extent and certainly that's the case in the us is the case here in europe and it's a case in a lot of major oil producing countries in the middle east china now where all right so the business case needs to be helped along by the government you would say to what extent under a new administration the u.s. is that possible do you see any steps by the by the administration that you believe will help further that shift from oil majors. absolutely i think the buy demonstration has got off to a really positive start to me they already announced they're going to stop giving new oil and gas leases on federal lands on public lands which is really positive fails that they're going to talk about seeing if they can phase out the existing oil and gas leaks in public lands these are really positive steps they really need to be implemented in very fast so the by the ministration needs to move ahead with that they also need to ensure that the alternatives are in place ok so we do need

energy and there are plenty full renewable energy sources but we need to direct 2 famous in place of the by the ministration needs to move quickly to scale up or new with energy to scale up infrastructure for green hydrogen ma select vacation of vehicles and at the same time it's really important is that they focus on a just transition so what that means is that there are going to be workers who are going to lose their jobs as we move towards a green economy and those workers 1st of all a social safety net in place for when they do lose their jobs but at the same time those workers need to be retrained so they can find a place in the new low carbon economy all right a tough and likely expensive transition to a conway with climate focus thank you very much let's take a look at some of the other global business stories making headlines u.s. pharma giant mare will help make rival johnson and johnson's cove a 1000 vaccine in order to produce to boost production of the one dough shot the partnership will allow the company to accelerate delivery of $100000000.00 vaccine doses by around a month. australia's economy has recovered strongly following

a severe contraction it grew by 3 point one percent in the 4th quarter that's despite a dispute with china its largest trading partner strict rules have helped australia keep coping 1000 infection rates very low. over to the netherlands now since october shops cafes and restaurants there have been closed a lockdown loss of the spring is on its way people are longing for a return to normality. for cafe and bar owners in the dutch city of bread not far from the belgian border enough is enough. all they could long. for weeks now we've seen that the pox and the skate ring stuff full of people no one keeps a distance everyone's on top of each other events are being held in the city parks and i want to show that you can also open up here in a safe and good way i think we need to i think out belgian neighbors are ready for it to. the country's lockdown rules came into force in october and

more than 4 months later are still in place going to be plenty of customers took advantage of the protest to relive the good old days from before the pandemic. dozens of shopkeepers in the northern city of closing event also welcomed costumers on tuesday to protest against the lockdown rules. shop and bear owners who open risk of 4000 euro fine and a criminal record to boot. the kind of not unusual fact we assume it won't come to that but suppose 100 shops were open today times 4000 euros i don't think people in the country will take that very well. and that doesn't feel right. the protests lasted just a few hours after an official warning from the police led shopkeepers to close their doors again. but some bar owners held on until the bitter end. all right and a reminder of our top story this hour germany is expected to extend its current

lockdown to march 28th that's according to a draft document widely circulated ahead of today's meeting between chancellor angela merkel and german state leaders. and that's it for me and the business team vitus aligned you to be dot com slash because that's that's watching. the phone against the coronavirus pandemic. as the root. been developing what does the latest research say. information and contacts the coronavirus update . on t.w. . different on the islands of. here women are in charge. archipelago has had

a matriarchal system for centuries. of society do it. differently. what do they do with their power. over wrangle starts more changes on t.w. . you may not realize it but you you with mathematical models every day something as simple as the weather forecast is actually a complex model based on countless data points. today prediction models are critical to coronavirus planning coded 19 is still new and it's hard to anticipate how it will spread and whom it will affect models can give scientists government officials and doctors previews of how to stop the virus and safe lives. welcome to

a covert 900 special i want to jones and to some extent i've contributed to predicts in models today by getting tested just like all the anchors here it's a precaution but those tests on individuals are costly a researcher in wanda came up with an efficient alternative. in the battle against the pandemic rwanda's coronavirus task force relies on comprehensive contact tracing. to get an up to date picture of how much the corona virus has spread rwanda tests a cross-section of the population regularly using an ingenious strategy called pool testing. the brains behind the strategy is wilfred defun a professor at the african institute for mathematical science. if you go to a community and test people it doesn't tell you how many people actually infected because you can test everybody so you always some pool and so to go from the sample

to the truth to reality you know. the calculations involve complex algorithms defun has translated them for us into an example from everyday life. the idea of your input this thing is really simple so imagine that you have 9 cups of beans and you have to order one of those lines but bins. and you know that to which core part of the beings you want school to be and taste so you might find out. who. to get. to avoid this effort the mathematician resorts to a simple yet efficient trick he combines being samples from different parts if all the beans in this pool are good he no longer has to test each part individually only if there are better beans in the sample must he perform at dish and all tests the principle can be applied any time groups are tested and it can be used to

combat 19. in rwanda sets of 10 and 20 samples are combined and tested similar taney asli if the pool test result is negative all the subjects in the pool sample are indicated as not having covert 19 but if the pooled result is positive each sample is retested individually the advantages of their putting up questions just to reduce the cost spends today for the adults to do the turnaround time for about $4.00 results and also to test a massively. community also the group just. for the. advantages for these if the virus is spread dramatically pooled samples test positive too often and retesting becomes costly and time consuming so

far however africa has low number of cases compared to western countries and the method is proving useful there. this is really purple for african countries but not only african countries even for the roping countries since we do love these and the problems. pulling up close tonight are people so we have been approached by a similar country ghana and kenya are now applying the strategy to mass testing in greece have also come from the u.s. and in britain the university of edinburgh is testing students with this method. out of atlanta is a lecturer in statistic in the department of mathematics at imperial college london welcome to our program and before we get into the nitty gritty of mathematical modeling just very very briefly what exactly is it that you do at your department. thanks for having me today so i am part of the empirical. code 19 response team

and we've looked at you know various kinds of infectious disease models to inform public health responses to the epidemic i guess the 1st and probably one of the most important pieces was weary and out scenarios on what would prevent hospitals to collapse and not prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths in the populations that i was the 1st one and we showed it so as resistance in general knocked out capping off non-essential services and will be fundamental to that later on we looked at the age groups as a state and yet the damage showing that it's primarily the 20 to 49 year olds that drives brett 78 percent of all transmissions occur from those individuals with limited. contributions from school age children and more recently we looked at a spread of the war once. in england and p. 100 cell and we show if you were 17 and its. effect of 1.5 to

1.6 what transmissible. the current variance their heart is in a 2nd and when you say you look at all these things what exactly does this mean i mean talk us through the prices for example of what you've been doing in brazil. so we start by you know the lies in real real time data as it comes in and is reported so in this case it's a case data initially because a case of the data from from the narrows hospital dates are just number of admissions a number of deaths burial dates are it sounds as you know it's been horrific only in and the amazon. and then we try to interpret it as data with mathematical models so these are. known indian wells it's a little bit unintuitive 2 to work with them it's not like i throw you a ball and you know where it lands so we really need the smallest to help us

understand. and how do you translate those models that are not linea for policymakers to understand what's going on so that they can decide on specific missions what we show you know the fits to the data itself along with 95 percent credible and the most to residents certainty we show for costs you know various what if scenarios and there's no single forecast right. but the difference in areas what would happen if you know if mobility were to reduce in a population what you know and other things. and then based on that you know based on that communication verification from several teams different analysis from different regions alternately decisions being made at a policy level i mean let's take a concrete example because here in germany and there's a lot of discussions right now politicians are talking about how to in the lockdown

now if german chancellor angela merkel came to you and asked you what happens to the infection rate if we were to open schools and restaurants next week could you provide her with a model. you know. yes so that is what we've been doing that they are not they are out for the past year for the british government and it's just one aspect more than 10 of our more league teams and institutions across the u.k. who come together and he back into this and so it's a. it's a very busy it's been about is a period i bet they actually do and taking you not giving advice you give them a model so they still have to sort of figure out what it means and make the right policy decision can you support them somehow to. maybe try to make authorities who have ever tried to really make the best transparent and easily accessible as possible so you know we give them graphs and they give timelines and projections

and conferences by adding very similar incidents from very different types of models. transparent to some sense that undergo mean one and a line all these models all right so if you're expensive bill these days certainly but when the pandemic is over if it's over one day what models would you like to work on. what you know what i could not he was not the only infectious disease out there in the world and you know primarily wrecking the nature be. you know many other diseases are you've heard about aid and friends on the 1st case the snow christian the transmissions. already happened as year so there's no shortage of problems to twerk. i'm afraid you're right yes all of that at imperial college in london thank you so much for your time. searching cognitive gears now you'll see what i mean what derek. how much of the

population has to be vaccinated before we reach herd immunity. everyone wants to know this number which from the start has generally been estimated at roughly 70 percent of the population the problem is that pinning it down exactly isn't possible yet because there are still so many moving parts and this pandemic 2 of the most important factors that can have a major impact on herd protection are still big question marks the 1st is the extent to which people who've been vaccinated can still potentially catch and transmit the disease even if they never develop symptoms themselves the data we have so far on this aspect is quite positive evidence from a couple of larger studies now in peer review indicates that at least some approved

vaccines appear to help lower a recipient's chances of being a transmitter after being vaccinated maybe dramatically the 2nd factor that plays a key role and how soon we reach heard protection involves variants when the virus mutates to become more transmissible people who get it grow more contagious so they give it to more people on average and that makes achieving her protection more difficult another potentially problematic facet of this problem is that that variants can also mutate in ways that lower existing immune protection to sars tovey to whether for those who've been vaccinated or for those who have had the disease so variants could turn people we thought were protected back into potential in factors to. spike the

a ponderable many see falling case numbers and countries with a nation but it's as evidence that her protection is already beginning to influence the course of the pandemic but we won't really know we have but until we get there . that's it thanks for watching.

the general trend is clear. the economy. companies are making revenue from the technology. and the trend is on the rise. but how harmless will be. for consumers and beyond the. made in germany. 30 minutes on d w. afrikan. google limits

from the guy who's even national park in congo was he and his family would love nothing more than to live in peace. but poachers and farmers are hunting them and threatening this species. what's being done to protect them no africa. 90 minutes on t.w. . they were forced into a nameless mass and. their bodies near tools. the history of the slave trade is africa's history. he describes how the greeks for

our entry often commented an entire continent into chaos and violence. the slave system created the greatest planned accumulation of wealth the world had ever seen up to that moment in time this is the journey back into the history of slavery . i think we will truly be making progress when we all accept the history of slavery as all of our history. our judgments received slavery routes starts march 10th on t.w. .

this is. from the standoff in myanmar and its reports that more people were killed as security forces used rubber bullets and also live ammunition to suppress the protests the demonstrators are still showing no signs of backing down also coming up germany's coronavirus pressure to relax restrictions is growing but health experts say that might lead to more inspections and then more restrictions. u.s. state of texas says it's lifting.