penis, in 3 books, you'll get smarter for pre d w books on you tube. ah, i wanted to see when i arrived here. i slept with 6 people in a room in. it was harsh, fair. i even got white hair and fleming, but jim, along with me and they told me to interact with, you want to know their story, my grants verifying and reliable information for my grants. this is the dr. news asia i'm british manager. as 2021 comes to a close, we're taking a look back at some of the biggest stories of the up. 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, i thought the worst of over 1000 might be behind them. the country had emerged relatively unscathed from the virus in 2020, but i spring turned to summer in just over 9000 outbreak brought the country to its knees. fueled by the delta variant, it became apparent in april, but 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 day at death's door, from dividers more than 6000 health systems and cities around the country collapsed

. oxygen ran out, medicine ran 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 had become a symbol of india's coven, 19 catastrophe. working with a rag over his 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 bought were running out of fire when i'm already already looking for them. oh yeah, well this is on the argument. 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 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 paranoia down. 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, you know. 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 scared 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 approx scientific rational. i think it was just an oil and there was a lot of field all around and, you know, i mean, it was, it was gusty times. and in many different ways. and how did your, your colleagues, 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 hers were also doing daily consultations. so be the seeing people at home through video consultations from across the country. and you know, we were trying our best to had them as much as we could by live at home with the

knowledge that if they did to do it, unfortunately, would be extremely challenging. for a lot of them to find a bed or 2 to get hospitalized. so in, you know, we, you know, i think most of us were sleeping at night hoping that the next morning is in the morning where we wake up with use of people did anything at home when we were hoping that people managed to pull through those 2 beats 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 old friends get affected by call it and, and watch them directly. 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 there are a lot of individuals passed away in that kind of situation and i, and i think that's that that's not something that anyone would want for anyone. we know what flaws in the health care system did the became

a pattern to do think during this time infrastructure building is something that's really important so that we don't suffer through this again. we do one sofa 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 as well, 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 does the evidence and signs bused or live there for the timing. but thank you so much for sharing your experiences. with us, dr. launcelot and talk. now the start of the prime minister in the movie had claimed india had defeated the colonel nevada's. but as a 2nd covert wave swept the country, he saw his claims and his leadership tested, quote, or not the 2nd in the fight against this wave of corona virus. some sound,

whatever obstacles are there, we are trying to remove it and we are working on a war footing. the park, i'm going to go off other countries to worked on a war footing to help india, the united states, the u. k. the europe in union. what among the many nations that sent in india, where the most price commodity oxygen, thousands of oxygen cylinders were transported into india. germany also sent an oxygen generating plant to delhi, to sustain a specialized over hospital. the double deli bureau to you by explaining why that was so important. the city of demi has gone to a hiring time. people have seen their loved ones, literally gasping for breath, as oxygen supplies rad out. any attempt to boost supplies here is hugely welcomed 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 possibly for help on platforms like facebook, instagram, and twitter, crowdsourcing care for their loved ones. but the crush of sickness was something that some believed no one could have prepared for it. it came as a joy. b o was trying to bear but we've been ordered. the situation will get this bad because the false if we didn't so severe. so i didn't, i don't think anybody expected this like right now my mother is positive and though i am going through the same thing and there are for many others also, and it's happening in every house debts and new cases from india. second over 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 mock and it's fight against the corona

virus pandemic. however, the 1000000000 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. gotta man is a professor of physics and biology at a sugar university 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 hearing is should be a little. but it, 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 immunities that we should be fee, a shop raising cases that he soon and that certainly concerns me. so when you say a shaw prize in case of a, you imagining a situation like the summer in this year, where in india, so this devastating 2nd code wave hopefully may not be as bad as that because the

difference between then and now is that many indians have been vaccinated, and many indians have already caught cold 19 once. so the combination of getting it once and then being vaccinated should in principle, protect you a little better. the problem is we don't know about the only conveying whether it respects that or whether it believe 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 be it or not. based on the data that you've seen so far provides them and, 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 to severity of the disease that it causes it can evade immunity. contrast with better provided it doesn't cause to the disease of the type. the delta didn't cause that we should be ok, but we don't know that yet. i'd like to sort 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 god was coordinated across the country. we need to have better sequencing to identify the death of aided 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, et cetera, to be prepared for the 3rd. that took us completely unaware of all of these lessons that i hope people are for the future. do you think some of the lessons have been taken? i wish there was more open the silver on, especially the guiding data. i think that's important. one definitely 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 2nd leave professor. i don't believe there was a bad thing, but thank you so much for joining us today. ah, and that's it for today. be sure to check out or other stories on d. w dot com, forward slash geisha on facebook and twitter. believe you with a looked back at the lens. indian health care workers have gone to, to carry out vaccinations in the country. it's useful

to fight against the corona virus pandemic. how has the rate of infection been developing? what are the latest research, se, information and context? the corona virus update because the 19 special next on d,

w. d w's crime fighters are back africans, most successful radio drama series continues this season. the stories focus on hate speech, cholera prevention, sustainable charcoal production, all episodes are available online. and of course you can share and discuss on d. w, africa's facebook page, and other social media platforms. crime fighters, tune in now. ah, ah, the fi is burnt day and night. these opening ceremonies have become a symbol of the coven. 19 catastrophe. and not just in india, cremmit toria around the world have buckled under

a record surgeon cova 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. oh, 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 told 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 covered 19.

well, williamson's can tell us about the situation on the ground. he's a chief physician at the senate toys 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. the me treat 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 comment 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 vote. would you say that lines up with what you're seeing and hearing about in intensive care units? yes sir, that's exactly the thing we saw last year. we learned a lot about the and delay in treatment, for instance, in 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 triple in comparison to 2019, so it's some things that we now learn and we don't know what will be the effects in the next few years because 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 a says mortality in the over eighty's or in kids, dimitri,

that's hard to detect because of the, the numbers as whole small we and for many countries, the one important thing is that from many countries, we don't have this information countries many countries with these 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 covered and non covered deaths? it was difficult, is some people thing about it and they said did this, the 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 call 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 cost to virus, so it's a streaming, difficult to differentiate exactly at the time of that when we the intensive care unit and we have a co $19.00 patient, he dies from monte organ failure. this is, he died from the all and figure when the patient got some tooth micro infection in combination with soft of 2 and he dies from mike holding punch. and maybe that soft cough to add it to it. and that this was the cause of their 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 told 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 is 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 call and 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 how to use it. but i think that the contributions of all the diseases to the assessment 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 coven? i don't think so. not very precisely. there are unfortunately large areas in the world where without reliable reporting of 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 now the data come in and many countries will lose the data later. there are ways to monitor mortality by, for example, monitoring cemeteries and don't rely on official data at all. and the 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, committee, kovak, and chief physician. we answer is great too heavy, both here. thank you. thank you. let's take a look now though, at how the coven 19 pandemic is hurting the fight against other diseases. in particular, patients who are chronically ill at the marine house clinic in mind. germany, one for rustic surgeon, has lost faith in his job. and the world is he cellphones, it's definitely very painful for us when was sat in the tumor conference and realized that our skills can't help any of our patients anymore because my son is

too far advanced. it really hurt his shoes. hot. peter hollows, heads 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 when somebody to take from lead martin and the snow question about it is it drives you crazy. was mondays because you know that a couple of months earlier, you'd have had a realistic chance of effecting a cure in the home cubits of him. so that means our therapies cannot buy a patient some time given them, but we can no longer offer them the prospect of a full recovery this whole coast 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 responded said they were recording an increase in severe cases. hospital safety officer and patient activist would hecker sees political failures south going north to management and it would have been better and highly commendable if the federal health minister had used his social media campaigns consistently raise awareness of this matter as well. that i said to go visit the hospitals again, go to your g p. 's. if he'd been radiating confidence, that would have been communicated to the population at large level at the physical . 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 won't be all that easy to answer but it's something i don't 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 and even

many months later. so your daughter's condition is not all that rare, even 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. nice to have you a long stay safe and see you again say ah ah, [000:00:00;00]

with ah ah ah ah, so the old man from the far noise on christmas eve, he brings presence to children all in the world. really

a closer look at his life. a different story. this is latrice story, a in 75 minutes on d w. we love europe. we love diversity, and anything unusual, no mountain is too high and no road is too long. in search of the extraordinary we are the specialists of the lifestyle europe, euro max, on d, w. are you ready to get a little more extreme? these places in europe are smashing all the records. stepped into

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only criteria is what we'll hook people up. we shed light on the opaque world who's behind benefits. and why are they a threat to what's all open world starts january 5th on d. w with, if you need to do is lie from the, the pandemic over shows another holiday season. as you know me calling varian spreads people, celebrating christmas are faced with the choice of taking the risk of seeing their loved ones, or going it alone for a 2nd year in a row. also on the program,