touch, follow us sometimes a seed is all you need to allow big ideas to grow. we're bringing environmental conservation to life with learning pass like global ideas. we will show you how climate change and environmental conservation is taking shape around the world and how we can all make a difference. knowledge grows through sharing and download it now. feel free ah, mm. this is d, w. news, asia, i'm parish manager. as 2021 comes to a close, we're taking a look back at some of the biggest stories of the europe. for me, none was bigger than seeing my own country india struggling to breathe in the us. devastating bout with over 19 that took away people i knew and destroyed many

families forever. today we look at how indian sculpt and if the country is better prepared for any new wave of infections. ah. as 2021 began, many in india thought the worst of covered 1000 might be behind them. the country had emerged relatively unscathed, from the virus in 2020, but i spring turned to summer in discovered 19 outbreak brought the country to its knees. fueled by the delta variant, it became apparent in april that india 2nd wave would be catastrophic. and the number's ball that out in me for the 1st time in the pandemic, the daily case count was recorded at more than 400000 the highest ever, worldwide. and in june indian saw the world's highest single debt debt stored from the virus. more than $6000.00 health systems and cities around the country

collapsed. oxygen ran out medicine, bran out beds, ran out, and death seemed to be everywhere. here's a report from me. ah, the fires burn day and night. but daily's morticians are barely able to keep up. these makeshift crematorium have become a symbol of india's coven, 19 catastrophe. working with a regular business parking lot on this was a parking lot, but we got permission to set up an extra 24 crematorium sites javascript. and now there are so many corpses we thought were running out of fire when i'm already already looking for them. oh yeah, well this is on the ottoman. oh, coven 19 has taken an enormous toll on india. many died because there was no one to take care of them. for days there had been lines of

patience in front of hospitals. no one, let's the men because there aren't enough beds or oxygen tanks. people feel abandoned. that was the fate of many who couldn't get a hospital bed. those that did were cared for by an army of doctors and nurses battling tremendous odds. one of them was pulmonologist, doctor launcelot pinto at the b. b, hindu ger hospital in one bite. i spoke to him earlier and began by asking what it was like for medical staff like him at that time. i think those are a memory is that a lot of as a whole we will be able to it is sunday because it was a, it was a time of a lot of spanish around i fortunately wasn't a city that did not run out of oxygen and you know, so the lack of oxygen or the lack of beds wasn't a concern yet, but we were seeing scenes from across the country where people were finding it difficult to find hospital bed, find the finding it difficult to, to get oxygen and be able to stream the scare that that would eventually happen to

us as well. so our hospitals would reasonably full. but i think we had ramped up in the infrastructure to a point that we did not suffer those acute shortages. that being said, you know, the numbers rising people getting hospitalized, this, this fear of the unknown in terms of the number of different medications being prescribed without abrupt scientific rational. i think it was just an oil and own there was a lot of fear all around and you know, i mean it, it was, it was gusty times and in many different ways. and how did your, your colleagues of other health care worker that you know, off personally, how did they hold up i think it was a stressful i think a lot of his were also doing the consolidations. we'll be seeing people at home, through a video consultations from across the country. and you know, we've been trying our best to had them as much as we could by live at home with the

knowledge that if they did to, to read unfortunately, would be extremely challenging for a lot of them to find a bed or 2 to get hospitalized so in, in a we, you know, i think most of us were sleeping at night hoping that the next morning is in the morning where we break up with news of people. did you do anything at home when we were hoping that people managed to push through those to be, which are generally good folk over it and, and somehow managed to get through that. that being said, that a lot of our health care workers also had the organ, family members and the friends get affected by it and, and watch them deteriorate, sometimes watch them, you know, being hospitalized in isolation. that way from their families was, was heartbreaking. a lot of real, so not only where you admitted to a hospital, but you were nice solution without contact with your family and a lot of individuals us to we in that kind of situation. and i, and i think that's something that anyone would want for anyone. we know what flaws

in the health care system to the became a pattern to do think and during this time infrastructure building is something that's really important so that we don't suffer through this again. we don't suffer from individual dying sometimes because for lack of cares available because of the old building of the system. i think the lessons to be learned in communications is when in terms of health communications, because that was all of on because of the unknown. and i think as a physician, i think the lessons learned in terms of guidelines and streaming clinical clinical treatment algorithms so that everyone does pretty much what is the evidence and science views were live there for that? i mean, but thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us dr. launcelot, in talk now at the start of the year, prime minister under mouldy had claimed india had defeated the colonel nevada's. but as the 2nd covered, waves swept the country, he saw his claims and his leadership tested on, on the 2nd wave in the fight against the struggling wave of corona virus,

san san jose. whatever obstacles are there, we are trying to remove it and we are working on a war footing with i'm going to make up for other countries to worked on a war footing to help india, the united states, the u. k. the european union. what among the many nations that sent in india's way, the most prized commodity oxygen. thousands of oxygen cylinders were transported into india. germany also sent an oxygen generating plant to delhi, to sustain a specialized over the hospital. the double deli bureau chief, i'm with a chima explaining why that was so important. the city of denny has gone to a hiring time even have seen their loved ones, literally gasping for breath. in supplies, read out any attempt to move in supplies here. it's usually about can invite people across old straw society felt angry and abandoned by the government

as they watched their relatives get sick and many die. people desperate to find spare beds or oxygen done to social media. they post a please for help on platforms like facebook, instagram, and twitter, crowdsourcing care for their seek loved ones. but the crush of sickness was something that some believed no one could have prepared for it. it gave him as a joy, b, o rod. i know the bear asked, but he didn't know that the situation we'll get this bad because the frost, it wasn't so severe. so i didn't, i don't think anybody expected this like right now. my mother to school because it did. and i am going through the same thing and there are so many, i don't know so, and it's happening in every house. debts and new cases from india. second covert wave began to recede. near the end of june. a national vaccine drive also ramped up in the following months, and in october, india, across the 1000000000 vaccinations marked in its fight against the corona virus

pandemic. however, the $1000000000.00 refers to just total vaccinations in the country. not people. the government now claims it's fully vaccinated, 50 percent of citizens above 18 years of age. god, man, is a professor of physics and biology at a stroke in diversity in india and has been following the countries response to covert 19 professor men. and a very is a new very am to that the countries dealing with now only kron how, what it should be in your b, from what the hitting it should be a little blended. it seems that at the rate at which, when the car has taken off in south africa and other countries in europe, if only one man is displayed in india and it's also immunity. so we should be fee a shop raising cases pretty soon. and that certainly concerns me. so when you sir shaw price, in case of that, you're imagining a situation like the summer in this year where an india is devastating. second curved wave hopefully may not be as bad as that because the difference

between then and now is that many new have been vaccinated. i mean, did some already caught cold 19 once, so the combination of getting it once and then big vaccinated? shouldn't principal protect you a little better? the problem is, we don't know about the on the convent whether it respects that or whether it be to evade the mood response is just so much stronger that it doesn't really make much of a difference that he would in fact, based on, based on the data that you've seen so far, professor, man, and do you think that it can evade immunity? it certainly does seem to be able to, they didn't, you know what we don't know. but really important to know is if the severity of the disease that it causes it can evade immunity. contrast been better the provide it, it doesn't cause to the disease of the take the delta did cause that we should be ok, but we don't know that yet. i'd like to vote of reflect on the past summer and it's been the kind of some of the no one really saw coming. i think least of all the

government. and i wonder what you think the biggest lesson is from how india handle this 2nd wave of the pandemic. the lesson is, i think we should more openness with data with important had more people been looking at the data to be easier to find pattern. the sudden increase the theme godless, coordinated across the country. we need to have better sequencing to identify the database early on to show that this was something new that was happening in 1st of all, in, in rural areas of a particular state about australia, dead and spreading across the rest of india. we needed to have been more serious about oxygen, i few support hospitals, etc. to be prepared for the 3rd. that took us completely unaware of all of these. listen that i hope people are for the future. do you think some of the lessons haven't taken i wish there was more open the silver on, especially the guiding data. i think that's important. i wonder if we have not that

i think overall, been better prepared in terms of hospitals, oxygen, etc. following the lessons of the 2nd leave, and i do hope a has, this is a not be strained to the extent that we're doing the secondly prevent them and, and believe that with the bad being. but thank you so much for joining us today. ah, and that's it for today. be sure to check out our other stories on d. w dot com, forward slash geisha on facebook and twitter. believe you with a looked back at the lens. indian healthcare workers have gone to to carry out vaccinations in the country. we see you soon. bye. ah

ah ah ah. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. how has the rate of infection been developing? what does the latest research say? information and context? the corona virus update because the 19 special net on

d w. every day counts for us and for our planet. golden ideas is on its way to bring you more. how do we make cities greener? how can we protect habitats? we can make a difference. global ideas, the environmental series in global 3000 on d. w. and online. blue defy is burned day and night. these opening ceremonies have become a symbol of the coven. 19 catastrophe. m. at no. just in india. cremmit toria around the world have buckled under a brake. hold surgeon cove,

a debts over 5000000 people have officially fallen victim to the virus. but the news magazine, the economist estimates that the pandemic true death toll is 4 times higher. ah, many people who die while infected a never tested to they don't enter the official tally. the patients have died of preventable causes, because overstretched, hospitals could not treat them. and many countries struggle to count deaths under normal circumstances. let alone a pandemic. the official covert toll could just be the tip of the iceberg. welcome on ben fizzle. and can we put our trust in numbers or the institutions that provide the statistics? in many respects, this pandemic has become a crisis of trust. just how dangerous or deadly is coven 19?

well william, since can tell us about the situation on the ground. he's a chief physician at the san antonio hospital in ash while he's also on the board of the german interdisciplinary association for intensive care and emergency medicine. and is in berlin today for us. dmitri kobuck is a data scientist from tubing and university, and joins us from tubing and to crunch the numbers. the me to let start with you, what's the likelihood of the global death toll being 4 times higher than the official rate? this number is very approximate. the official climate tell at the moment is i think around 5000000. i think based on the data, we can be reasonably sure that it's more than twice that much. so it's about 10000000 and i would say it's probably below 20. and it's hard at the moment to know more exactly because unfortunately for many, many countries, we don't have any reliable data whatsoever. solis, estimate of the economist is an extrapolation from the data. we have to large parts

of the world where we don't have any data over. would you say that lines up with what you're seeing and hearing about in intensive care units? yes, sir, that sir. exactly. the thing we saw last year, we learned a lot about the and the lay in treatment for instance, and cardiovascular disease. like acute my calling fortune or out of hospital cardiac arrest. and in some regions, for instance, in italy or in paris, new york, the death tolls tripled in comparison to 2019. so it's some figures that we now learn and we don't know what will be the effects in the next few years, because the people don't go to doctors. they don't go to doctors when they have symptoms and so on. so we must get the data about at the moment. the figures are quite unsure what about assess mortality in the over eighty's or in kids, dimitri,

that's hard to detect because the, the numbers as whole small and we, and for many countries, the one important thing is that for many countries, we don't have this information. countries many countries we nice numbers of the overall desk, but we don't have yet to possibly we'll get that later. detailed 8 breakdowns. another question for you, i guess some people may think this quite simple, but i guess it could be complicated. how do you distinguish between cove? it a known covert deaths is, is why difficult is some people think about it and they said did this, that person died from co, with 9 in on the idea with code 9 and was code 910. the exact cause for the death or is it just the we measured this off of to virus and the person

died from acute my coding fire can but we also know that many of the diseases, for instance, cardiovascular diseases may, may be aggravated by the soft costs to virus, so it's a streaming, difficult to differentiate exactly at the time when we and the intensive care unit and we have a code 19 patient dies from monte organ failure. this is, he died from the organ figure when the patient got some cute migraine in faction, in combination with off of 2 and he dies for my accounting touch and maybe that soft cough to added to it. and that this was to come up there. so it's quite difficult and not all people are brought in germany to autopsy. so we don't know the exact figures and it's in the end the, the, the, the doctors who tell this was do all died with when it comes to the fake is dimitri . what does the world mortality data set show when it comes to other diseases?

we see in multiple countries that the exceptional talent, which is what the matter is about mortality data set, just tracks the call, the deaths freshly during the call with outbreaks, the entire excess mortality is explained by calling other contributions are very small in comparison. so we don't, we don't think that with, with i don't think that with our data set, we can say anything about just about how to use it. but i think that the contributions of all the diseases to the accessible challenges are very small. when we talking about accept my challenge, we primarily talking about cause it influenced deaths. dmitri, will we ever know the true number of deaths from covert? i don't think so. not very precisely. there are unfortunately large areas in the world where without reliable reporting of either the cases or the death or also all cause mortality and particular i'm talking about developing countries. but i do

think that we will know the number more precisely than know the data come in and many countries will use the data later. there are ways to monitor mortality by, for example, monitoring cemeteries and don't rely on official data at all. and these estimates were going to be coming in the coming years and the number the, the, the total estimates will get more precise, got a scientist, dimitri kovak. and she physician, we answer is great too heavy both here. thank you. thank you. let's take a look now though, at how the code 900 pandemic is hurting the fight against other diseases. in particular, patients who are chronically ill at the marine house clinic in mines, germany, one sarcastic surgeon has lost faith in his job, and the world is his, our fields. it's definitely very painful for us when we sat in the tomb a conference and realized that our skills can't help any of our patients anymore because that's when it's too far advanced. it really hurt some hot peter hollows,

hence the marine house clinics. the rustic surgical ward, he seeing more and more patience with tumors that have grown to the stage where they're no longer operable. they all follow the same pattern. fearful of contracting the corona virus. patience lead routine checkup slide all the while they're tumors growing unseen. by the time they get to the clinic, it's almost too late. somebody to take for the leap orthodontist. no question about it is it drives you crazy. was mondays because you know that a couple of months earlier than you'd have had a realistic chance of effecting a cure gonna handle carpet. so feel so that means our therapies can now buy a patient some time giving them. but we can no longer offer them. the prospect of a full recovery is home cut close in our system. the marine house clinic isn't the only hospital experiencing this sad trend of 1st german t v station

a r d documentary survey, the 20 clinics with the highest number of lung cancer patients. 71 percent of those who responded said they were recording an increase in severe cases. hospital safety officer and patient activist would hecker sees political failures, thousands bring more to management, and it would have been better and highly commendable if the federal health minister has used his social media campaign to consistently raise awareness of this matter as well. that i said, go visit the hospitals again. go to your g p. 's oxley. if he'd been radiating confidence that would have been communicated to the population at large, out of latin before a cold. germany's health ministry told the a r d journalist. it has addressed the situation many times that the minister himself spoke about it in may 20, 20, and february of this year. as did the federal center for health education. but that treatment and therapies are up to doctors to decide they, for their part,

expect to see an increasing number of severe cases emerging among people whose lung cancer hasn't yet been recognized. time for derek williams and of your question, which would be all that easy to answer but it's something i want to know if i lost my sense of smell or taste. oh my daughter had good 19 months ago and still hasn't regained her sense of smell or taste. will they come back? the sense of smell in the sense of taste are closely intertwined, and losing them is a very common symptom of covered 19. several studies have shown that the loss of smell, or changes to the sense of smell in particular, are an issue for at least half the people who get the disease, probably more. sometimes it's the only symptom that develops in a patient who's otherwise asymptomatic. although there's still a lot that we don't know about what causes the loss of taste. there is evidence

indicating that the loss of smell is likely linked not to the virus infecting the all factory neurons that carry signals from the nose in the direction of the brain, but instead to its infecting cells called suss 10 tackler cells which play a supporting role in the lining of the nasal cavity. according to an overview of studies that i read, the loss of taste and the loss of smell usually occurs very suddenly, at the onset of coven 19, and often begins to slowly return. after around 3 to 5 days, many patients had pretty much regained the senses completely within a few weeks, but a significant percentage, maybe as many as one and 20 people. they continue to have major deficits. um,

even many months later. so your daughter's condition is not all that rare in as um, if the century loss is persistent, a lot of experts, including ones that we have here on the coven, 19 special. they recommend what's called all factory training. it involves repeated targeted exposure to specific sans on a daily basis. and that's helped a lot of patients recover at least some sensory perception. mm hm. i staff you along. stay safe and see you again say ah ah, with

ah ah, he jo india, an unequal gain. women and climate change with lower income changes unless he said they are the was affected by impact. but women not just

going to stand there and watch. they have tangible ideas against the consequences of global warming, eco, india. 90 minutes on d. w. in for live and on demand. hot gas in language courses, video and audio. any time, anywhere that d w media center ah, devastated houses of to are we can with cars carried on money, effects of climate change. i mean, felt wired before a station in the rain forest continued carbon dioxide emissions have risen again. young people all over the world are committed to climate protection. what impact will because change doesn't happen on its own.

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me ah ah ah, this is dw news lie from berlin. the pandemic overshadows another holiday season. people around the world celebrating christmas are phased with a tough choice of taking the risk of seeing their families and friends, or going it alone for a 2nd year in a row.