for. the stars. to. this. day another deadly record. more than 3600 people have died from 19 in the last. update from the. press freedom in hong kong. incidents that raise questions about the city's police force.

could join us the news from india continues to be bleak on thursday the country reported nearly 380000 cases and more than 3600 deaths from covered 19 the deadliest single day for any country battling the pandemic shortages of medical supplies continue including oxygen even though some hospitals in the capital delhi said they had enough stalks for at least one whole day on wednesday the government opened up a stray sions for covert 1000 vaccinations for anyone above the age of 18 some 11600000 people signed up for the new phase of vaccinations that gets underway over the weekend but the country is short in vaccines and only about 9 percent of india's population have so far received one shot. with more on the situation in delhi. for. number is the work

to. the national to do with 20. 1 behind me are to. many on the toning to twitter and instagram in search of food in bed and medicine but the death toll rising let alone even the outside. no vaccination for expected to be a crucial element in the fight against. aids but already that often don't be affordability and availability of vaccines as wasted all of them out to everybody. yesterday even registrations open for this category many people. thought to. have enough. in addition the indian government has allowed manufacturers to

sell to private and at the higher price. even render. not everybody go for the job. today. from delhi but questions remain as to why the country is facing such a deluge of cases. is a monologist just working with cold patients in a hospital he explains why he thinks outbreak could have been much less severe. i think we underestimated the magnitude of what we're seeing right now i think people are very short by the fact that the numbers decreased significantly in the month of december january i think it was a false sense of reassurance that if the it's gone through all the festivals that we did at the end to go without experiencing so just the worst was behind those and therefore we could live without god we could be could be a little more liberal in the precautions that be taken over the last year i think

that was a mistake in royal more humanitarian aid is arriving in india to help the country cope with the current outbreak 2 planes from russia and delhi. needed oxygen concentrator ventilators and medicines. are also on their way from the u.s. and other countries getting patients the oxygen they need to breathe remains a critical problem with reports of a fast growing black market for the vital commodity and with thousands of people dying from the virus every day are facing a shortage of space. that is forcing them to conduct mosque or missions sometimes even in pods and parking lots. and you can keep tracking updates and more information on the evolving situation in india on our website to dot com and on facebook and twitter.

free press advocates in hong kong are outraged after a court last week convicted a journalist for investigating an attack on pro-democracy protesters in 2019 bouche oil was found guilty of folds for obtaining information on license plates of alleged attackers involved in a violent incident in july 2900 unknown men dressed in white attacked pro-democracy protesters at the un long subway station police were accused of standing by and not intervening bows documentary on public broadcaster r t educate also used license plate numbers of some of the attackers to establish their connection to politically influential probe aging rule committees. journalism should not be a crime these people say. verdict last week sent shock waves through hong kong that day she became the 1st journalist

in the city to be convicted for an act of reporting. to the us a very top day to all journalists and all whole lot to me personally today it's not just the work on me or ruling on the person ruling. power was investigating an incident during the city's pro-democracy protests in 2019. 21st a large gang of men in white shirts stormed into a metro station and assorted people they believe to be protesters. the police were accused of deliberately failing to intervene during the mob attack they faced allegations of collusion with the thoughts which authorities denied they also denied alleged links between the assailants and hong kong representatives.

but bo presents evidence of those links in her documentary hong kong connection on the evening of 721 a number of vehicles carrying white clad men appeared on from your street not. connection made car license plate checks and found that several of the vehicles were registered under the names of the village representatives this fly since plate numbers are publicly assessable in hong kong and checking them was common practice among journalists until bar was charged full falsifying her request for the data and find the equivalent of $640.00 euros. many fear that last week's verdict amongst to a death sentence for investigative reporting in hong kong. for freedom of speech the press person. believes. the conviction also marks another blow to the city's dwindling press freedom which

fell to 80th place in the latest global index a dramatic fall from 18th in 2002. in recent weeks authorities have vowed to probe what they call fake news that undermine national security. of these journalists and their supporters say they do not back down and will continue their work for as long as they can. on the line from hong kong. did you make false statements to obtain information from a vehicle for your documentary. absolutely a lot because like searching information on the coast has been a long time practice in hong kong and i believe every journalist and hong kong has practiced the same thing in the past 20 in the past 2 decades over the. 20

years are journalists in hong kong free to do is to do a database of the ficos for reporting and journalistic purpose and we have to fill up a form declare our purpose on making those as us do data which in crew legal proceedings. as and sells or courier and are the vehicle purpose and in parts we always chose our dovi coast transportation paths and we haven't we did not we never have an understanding that. journalists as a single judo's data is a novel in hong kong so i gave them fig that i am making false statements to dos in the mission does that mean that you were targeted for reporting on an incident where police were accused of standing by and not intervening. well. i always talked to those who asked this question that i don't want to make

a guess on the intentional of her teeth or making this and fossilman and also this . in this new york fashion but we cannot the line that. attack on a 21st in 29000 has been a very controversial chapter in hong kong and i'm the 1st journalists who has been arrested and charged by the police on making false statements for a particular s.s. to vehicle information so a lot of people concern in hong kong concerned about the intention of the police on making day arrests and also the justice department to decide to charge me on this incident. but we also have to look at the incident on a wider perspective that right after d n t extradition bill movement. government has tried to tighten up all as those 2 or pick information particularly on dozhd mission or contain sensitive information on

the excuse of. the excuse of boarding boxing to citizens and protesting the pivot of citizens so i guess is a very general rule. taken a country or off a generalist access to public information how hard is a vow to work as a journalist in hong kong right now. i guess those situations has worsened in the past 2 years 2 years ago over there and he extradition bill movement a lot of journalists has been facing has faced in. a lot of. violence from the authority like at the use of guess the use of drones or even the what the fullest on journalists and then right after the movement. there 3rd the offered he has tried to redefine don't definition of media representatives which

limits. presence of a freelance or independent journalist to cover protests at sports and when we are sourced so a lot of media organizations they are phrasing some crap even. from the tycoons or from the government and then we also as saw the rate of daily wow is that she may lie has been a long time. so also my case and. i would describe that they has been a like a speeding up control over depravity them in hong kong relieve a very for the time being but thank you so much for joining us from hong kong journalist barr try. and get. that's it for today there's more on our website did upper dot com forward slash a shot we need for today with the images of the launch of an unmanned space module by china it is set to become part of a prominent space station the country plans to complete by the end of 2022 are back

tomorrow we'll see you there over. the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. as the rate of infection been developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus update. on t w. endears coronavirus crisis i d w new special will look at the drastic situation and debt and the impact of the

triple mutation on the country how can the rest of the world how to walk and be done for the people and how can india bring the situation under control a special edition of d.w. news on the coronavirus crisis in india starts april 30th at 11 and d.-w. . maybe it's a pill. or a spray. or a liquid medicine. an easy and safe treatment to target sars cough to. it would be given immediately after diagnosis ideally it's available over the counter in a pharmacy a cheap antiviral tablet with bearable side effects. we have fraxinus we even have drugs that help with the most serious symptoms of code 19. in the hunt for drugs scientists are exploring many different treatments. but where are we in the search

for a pill. good question welcome to our kobe 900 special i want to johnsonville and good to have you with us and wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just pop a pill in coby 1000 would be nothing more than a nasty cold science is working on a variety of therapies but it's somewhat slow going. how do you switch off the coronavirus render it harmless german scientists co-write therapeutics set themselves this task a year ago 12 months later they seem to have achieved their goal. most drugs currently in development target mild cases of covert 1000 illnesses. are drug is special a designed to cure serious illnesses is well. into. their research and initial clinical tests which have been running for a few days were primarily financed by private investors and government funding from

the state of lower saxony. but now the company needs more funding. of course we want to be ready to meet market needs and our goal is to get the emergency approval by the end of the year. then we would have to produce in sufficient scale that we can supply patients with the necessary medication. currently the german government offers funding of $50000000.00 euros which is split between several companies. this compares with over 740000000 euros in funding for vaccine research. we need tens of thousands of volunteers for testing that's what costs a lot of money and where you simply need larger sums. by money. when you vaccinate healthy people you need a lot more healthy people then when you are testing a drug that is targeted at the sick. and bike. recently however the

federal government appears to have rethought the issue and further funds have already been announced. we lost many many months because the financial resources were simply not available for the drug developers we can no longer afford to keep wasting time. kora therapeutics says it needs 50000000 euros to reach the emergency approval stage german government funds won't be enough for this so the biotech start up has been speaking to international investors. now antiviral treatments attack the virus and stop it multiplying but the virus doesn't fight fair using our own cells to reproduce and finding a treatment is difficult of the best of times let alone during a pandemic. so far the only antiviral drug approved for the treatment of covert 19 in germany is rendez severe studies show a 33 percent reduction in the duration of the illness. there are other treatments

being developed. american pharmaceutical giant marc is working on a similar drug called new pair of air and pfizer has also started human tests on an antiviral drug. if the immune system overreacts in a later phase of the disease steroids such as dex the method zone come into play it's the cortisone the curbs the immune system in germany 2 decks of meth is known as used in severe cases it is when the patient receives additional oxygen. they are also preparations for antibody treatment which helps prevent symptomatic infection the drug from us pharma giants were general health former us president donald trump . antibodies are also found in the blood plasma of recovered covert 1000 patients there affected pans on the severity of the illness and how long ago it was germany's public health body the robert cock institute says

deployment in severe cases is possible. needham state a man is a senior id physician of the department of infectious diseases and respiratory medicines at university in berlin as a very good to have you with us especially because you are now offering the use of monoclonal antibodies in short in a.b. or mab in the so called cold map outpatient clinic in berlin what exactly does this therapy offer. well we offer treatment with one of the 2 a bale of mono clone an antibody product and the mono clone a. tog a protein off the sars cough to virus and they have a potential to prevent. the progression to a c.v. a disease and a gag symptoms and limit the progress in patients with mild to moderate.

disease particularly we know that in those who have not developed yet. in their genus antibody response we know that there is potential that these patients benefit from this kind of therapy and who are these patients that are actually illegible to benefit from it is it available to everyone. well. there are some criteria which we look at too. and in the right patients. we look for patients who have new or positive tests so we. need a. test p.c. our reside which is not order then 72 hours. to provide. that security that we only treat patients in the early course of infection. and

we look for certain risk factors in the patients. which are for example age or immuno. suppression for example are purely patients who are on to shimon therapy because our. cancer. patients who are are going transplant patients and therefore on immunosuppression are candidates for the treat men and other patients for example who have received medication or just qadri took similar patients who suffer of aids are candida. people with down syndrome are patients kidney. patients patients on chronic him a diagnosis patients with obesity it with the. elevated

body mass index of over 35 example and you probably have to probably you probably need to go to your own g.p. and basically prove that you are one of those patients who who actually can get to this kind of treatment but could this therapy also help prevent an infection. well there are some. preliminary results showing that it could prevent infection but the results from randomized controlled trials are not published yet so we do not use a test as a preventive she let's say as opposed to expose or prophylaxis when you assume infection so we so far only use it for patients with a provan infection in which we use their p.c. our results are now of course i have to remind you that we're all dreaming of

a simple cure as we said in the beginning of the program a pill a spray something like that to help us through infection how realistic is that notion. of course that's what we are dream. so we do not agree have anything the clothes coming up closely for example just appear of course as the trials going on and really looking for treatment options but so far there is no serious pill for example. which we can hope to be the future easy treatment of the stigma and from the sharia to influence thank you so much. let's get back now to the roots off our troubles and that of course is the virus and its variants time to hand over to eric . is it possible that the same variance arose

independently without travel in different places. the answer to this touches on one of my favorite evolutionary concepts called convergence it's basically the idea that when different species face similar environmental pressures in different places then nature can come up with remarkably similar solutions to cope with them a good example of convergence is for instance the the protective spines that are embedded in the skin of both porcupines and hedgehogs the trait didn't arise just once in a common ancestor and then get passed down it evolved independently in both species because a spiny outside is clearly a good defense against predators if you're small and slow and just want to be left

in peace the ija leaves and then sets viral genomes also change constantly and it happens a lot faster than with animals because by iris as replicate so quickly and abundantly the vast majority of those changes will be neutral or even harmful but a tiny number of them will give a virus an advantage for example a mutated gene might change the spike proteins on its surface in ways that allow the virus to slip into cells more easily and because the source code be to genome is is actually pretty small the chances of specific identical mutations like that occurring in different places at different times. this is actually fairly high so we are seeing some of this sort of genetic convergence but because variants also collect many other highly individual mutations as they evolve

genetic sequencing still allows us to tell them apart. there is williams there and he'll be back again tomorrow to on some more of your questions just post them on our covert 19 you tube channel for now that's all for this edition of out a big night in special thanks for watching. in .

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