in the headlines at this hour the czech president says his country needs to start using russia's covert vaccine and calls for the health minister to be fired for refusing to approve the drug. the european medicines agency urges countries it to keep using the astra zeneca vaccine after 4 nations that suspended the drug over reports of severe blood clots. britain shuts down for brand new covert emergency hospitals built at a cost of half a $1000000000.00 pounds of public anger boils over a mere one percent pay rise for frontline health workers. for most this is not a place to around. and in many hosts of sites across the. uk it.

and yet another protest in new york against the governor with more calls for him to resign pressure is already building against andrew cuomo over his handling of the pandemic we hear from the daughter of one care home victim who is demanding answers . and. broadcasting live direct from our studios in moscow this is our chief international i'm sean thomas certainly glad to have you with us. and the president of the czech republic has called on the government to urgently approve the russian made sputnik of a vaccine to ease the ongoing health crisis and it has spiraled into a major dispute within the leadership in prague with president. calling for the health minister to be fired for dragging his feet on the issue here is our europe

correspondent peter all of. well the president of the czech republic deeply unhappy with senior figures in the government of that nation. called for both the health ministry and the minister for health to step up to the plate in approve the sputnik vaccine ahead of the european medicines agency giving the green light a similar move was done in countries like hungary that independently approved the vaccine for use without. a approval it was still waiting for the difference in the czech republic is those that the president is now calling for senior figures in the cabinet to be sacked i would like to say that the 2 biggest obstacles to delivering sputnik be to the czech republic and the minister of health and also the director of the state institute for drug control if millions of people abroad are already being vaccinated with these jabs where that russian or chinese than the 2 i spoke of are to blame for the fact that our people will continue to die unnecessarily the

only solution i see is the retirement of both well he certainly came but young blood and the health minister in prague has said he will wait for the e.m.a.'s approval before allowing sputnik v. to be used in check as long as i'm the health minister i will insist that vaccination in the czech republic is not done with the drug there's not been approved by the european medicines agency but if he was to change his mind there are plenty within the government who would be very keen to see the russian vaccine rolled out across the country i would not seek to devalue the results of russian science just because it comes from russia we have a situation where there are not enough vaccine supplies in europe so the e.u. should have negotiated with other manufacturers including manufacturers from russia a long time ago. well elsewhere with one of the major vaccines that's being used here in europe the astra zeneca job italy and denmark could become the latest e.u.

member states to suspend its use they joined by dawn e.u. member states in europe norway and iceland in carrying out this suspension in denmark it follows the death of one person with a blood clot having just received the vaccine health minister in that country said it's not currently possible to conclude if there is a link he made that announcement as he also announced that there would be a full investigation earlier we saw similar scenes from austria just under a week ago or so the european medicines agency ruled what happened in that country had no link to the astra zeneca vaccine being given so these moves are precautionary in nature but certainly serious and worthwhile being looked at and that's why these member states of the e.u. as well as other european nations of of decided to take the decision to suspend the

use of astra zeneca for now. as peter just mentioned a number of countries have suspended the use of the astra zeneca vaccine over reports of blood clots and one death in denmark now the european medicines agency which is heading of the investigation says those countries should continue using the jap the position of european medicines agency safety committee. is that the vaccines benefits continue to outweigh its risks and the vaccine can continue to be administered while investigation of cases of flu on bone bullock events is ongoing . to scientists we spoke to outlined the potential implications of the shot being suspended. i think when you're vaccinating very large numbers of people you've got to recognize that in the general population there are going to be a fix anyway and people are suffering diseases all the time and you need to be sure that when any of beds that you see any effects that you see of the vaccine are not

simply because your box 900 large group of individuals who have other health conditions and so you have to look at it very very carefully and that's why you need to take a bit of a breather and investigate the possibility that the vaccine is it associated with these effects as far as i i can tell some of the the e.m.a.'s already looked at this in relation to austria and as for no it's no specific links with the vaccine because i've done that study comparing blood clots and other and other effects in the general health of healthy populations and i say the normal population versus the banks and the population so you have to look at these things very very camp is a bit of a big issue hasn't there about confidence in vaccines generally and there's been there's been the big issue with the in europe about the fact of age on the effectiveness of banksy. and of course as a you have to investigate every serious side effect for me but there is a big into the commercial dimension to all of this as well you need to look at the

number of people at your port said that the batch of facts even gone to. i said probably many different countries is there a problem with. globetrotting in other countries as well or is this just a one off for example in denmark that's a really important thing to find out and really anybody with that sort of oversight multinational oversight like there may do that the european model of medicines agency has to take the sort of questions and concerns of each member state into account when it when it came to gives off dorothy i don't think that one can say the a.m.a. is being. sick shuttle careless you know that good then bad that questions that douse will be slightly different from regulators in the u.k. or in other countries so i overrule one gets quite a broad picture of the safety of this drug was one of the ways. in many

different countries. italy is set to become the 1st you state to make russia's sputnik the vaccine with production due to start in july and the european medicines agency is considering whether to approve the shot and its developers are demanding an apology after the agency's chair described the authorization process as quote russian roulette nevertheless italy expects it to manufacture $10000000.00 doses by the end of the year as the bloc suffers from huge shortages from western alternatives the president of the italian russian chamber of commerce told us that the deal is about people not politics. as for public opinion leaving aside political views everyone is very much looking forward to the vaccine people are waiting for doses not for statements though a great number were coming from fires and astra zeneca according to the promises all italians were to be vaccinated by june but unfortunately we can see that it

won't be the case therefore there are great hopes for sputnik v. i wouldn't say that the reason it's widely anticipated is because it's a russian vaccine people want to get any vaccine and certainly one with a reasonable price and these religious sticks and sputnik the meets those expectations i believe that's been in the perfectly fits into the logic of the made with russia label let me give you a specific example the russian direct investment fund was looking for european pharmaceutical company incorporation with which you could produce a vaccine in europe as the russian italian chamber of commerce we couldn't sit idle we examined all the information concerning the vaccine i personally was one of the 1st foreigners inoculated with sputnik we understand there is no life for development without a vaccine and geopolitics shouldn't be a priority or the focus should be put on people's health and business. and vaccine innovation is not the only russian anti covert breakthrough the russian institute of immunology is testing a drug that could stop infected people from spreading the disease the head of the

institute told us about the trials. were going in the clinic. trials of near 19 kicked off at the beginning of this year at the moment the 1st phase concerning its safety is coming to a close and we expect it to be completed by the middle of march and then as part of the 2nd phase we will proceed to the examination of its efficacy on patients the medicine is designed to stop a virus from replicating itself it's clear already that this drug will be administered in an inhaled form as for the period of effectiveness it's hard to say right now certainly the earlier an infected person takes the medicine the better it will work however given its immediate focus on blocking the replication of the virus we believe it can be effective at any stage of illness anyway let's wait until we get the results of the 2nd face. italy has a launched the world's 1st covert hospital train as it struggles with overflowing warts. and this is

a medical training that has been equipped to transports and treat critically ill patients and dose intensive care costs everybody is organized in the intensive care unit and obviously this simply equipment with the label to do the job 7 patients can be transported in each carries so in total $21.00 patients in intensive care. covered cases in the country have again been on the rise this month forcing authorities to put more regions into the so-called red zone with the tightest restrictions the health minister says that the train will head to wherever it is needed most. the hospital train was made available to reinforce the territory where there is a difficulty it's approximately service a national health service that goes where there is a problem. money down the drain that is how the u.k.'s huge temporary covered hospitals are being described after it was revealed most are now being closed down

having treated only a small handful of patients it has led to questions over the government's approach to the pandemic as artie's kate partridge reports. 4 of england's nightingale hospitals are being closed down they've been built at a cost of 500000000 pounds to preempt a surge in the pandemic but the east london venue treated only 54 patients in the 1st wave while others so not all n.h.s. officials say they served as the nation's safety net since the very early days of the been there make the nightingale hospitals have been on hand as the ultimate insurance policy in case existing hospital capacity was overwhelmed but many permanent hospitals were already short staffed and unable to release frontline workers to the nightingales the government felt the need to show some some. peace that they could share what they look how rapidly we have created one thing it

was rules and. managed to create a hospital and once we've even even more so i mean there's an element of basically showing of those who are trying to reassure that they were doing things and when when the government starts to do things right there is an injury you're going to get the waste of money because no one asked the question well do we need to really do we need to as it turned out we did. it also turned out we start them because the main issue was basically stopping not the actual number of plates that were available so the whole thing was just. to go to mars. thank you see while it new year medics in covert hotspots were days away from having to choose to be treated and who wouldn't as record coronavirus admissions forced ambulances to wait outside a n.d. and amid the surge n.h.s. workers had to resort to wearing bin bags due to

a lack of personal protective equipment some doctors even received p.p.a. which had gone beyond its expiry date over 2 years the u.k. government has also set aside cash for its much criticized code 19 track and trace system 37 1000000000 pounds of taxpayers' money prompting a scathing report from a westminster spending watchdog despite the unimaginable resources throwing at this project testing trace cannot point to a measurable difference to the progress of the pandemic british expats cannot be treated by the government like an a.t.m. machine we need to see a clear plan and costs better controlled in his budget chancellery she soon x. said the government had spent over 280000000000 pounds during the pandemic over 700000 jobs have been lost and the economy has suffered its biggest drop in 300 years but tough questions are now being asked about how chunks of that 280000000000 pounds have been spent and the impact that they've had i think the collaboration

are very cool reply and very cool our execution we're planning our numbers. of course are printed money and it's all very. nice to get all the hospitals most of which were not properly was peter comes with the resources. the governments the big cross was not looking at how much the issue. because the. extra hospitals. if you don't got the staff to go in and. the hospital closures come at the same time of the government has said it cannot afford more than a one percent pay rise for n.h.s. workers and nurses have launched a petition calling for a 15 percent salary hike which has so far seen more than half

a 1000000 people sign up one nurse explained what a one percent pay rise actually means. to be honest when dissent is quite frankly an insult to the profession and to the n.h.s. it's a whole the most noses that equates to around 3 pounds if you're weak and and in many hostile sites across the it costs more than that to pocket call to go to work a market cop and we are acutely aware of this financial strain that's the brits on the u.k. by the pound emic at i'm not saying that we deserve any more than anyone else we're just saying that we are also decent they will say they see what we do and the public sector workers have seen some sadly well deserved raises recently and we've been left out of that again as an n.h.s. and i think when we talk about money and what's affordable we've just seems so she said and. done it in its extra system that we pay for an n.h.s. to house if the percent pay rise and it would still be money left in the post after that we see newly qualified mrs and student nurses already thinking gosh you know

if i come into the right korea here we have a little 100000 nurses baking season the way i'm not really causes patient safety issues across all it's what we really need is to fill those vacancies and to have a committed and enthusiastic and educated group and we're not going to achieve that unnecessarily paying our staff i'm afraid. still to come this hour we'll hear from 2 lawmakers from the alternative for germany party which is hoping to gain a ground in the upcoming elections that are much more after a short break this is art international.

so ironic that all the people that are in the big point bubble you know talk about the other bubbles that the fed is inflated without recognizing that they're in a bubble themselves i mean it's like a bubble is generally in the eye of the beholder nobody can tell their own bubble and so you've got all these people who are involved in the crypto bubble they can't see it.

welcome back this is arch international the pressure is continuing to mount against new york's under fire governor andrew cuomo on several fronts a protest over homelessness and a drug overdose is solved police move in and make a number of arrests. go your way. protesters have been chanting that the governor had failed in new yorkers this latest a demonstration comes amid a wave of anger over sexual assault allegations against cuomo and his handling of the covered health crisis the governor has been strongly condemned for undercounting of the number of deaths in that nursing homes cuomo has since admitted he made a mistake in withholding the data. and we didn't provide information. it allows. press people cynics politician to fill the void i just want to make sure people know these are the facts these are the facts. everything

that could have been done was done all right the state's health department had reported around 8000 fatalities in care homes but that number excluded those who were transferred to hospitals where they died it was later acknowledged there i had in fact been 15000 deaths in total many people lost loved ones in the pandemic grace father died last year in one new york care home she has been demanding answers about promo's policies which saw nursing homes taking in covert positive patients. my father was in a nursing home for rehabilitation in the nursing home for 23. when he were there with a shit period ended my family picked him up he 'd could no longer stand being governor cuomo issued his march 25th mandate for seeing the nursing homes to take hazard of patients or any patient with that being able to test them the nursing

home. system was not prepared for any kind of health care emergency they didn't have the proper p p p they didn't have the proper the proper ability to separate the sick from. the phone or both governor responsible and commissioner health doctors on earth they are both very smart men and from that day one governor cuomo has said that the most vulnerable were those that were the elderly and that. coronavirus in a nursing home would be a feeding frenzy on the elderly and i know my father still encountered it but their governors attitude of who cares where they die it does matter because it points to one where where they're you know errors in their policies and to

why aren't they afraid of having those numbers revealed. germany is gearing up for the start of a so-called super election year which kicks off with regional votes in 2 states this weekend and culminates with a general election in september with chancellor angela merkel set to leave office towards the end of the year sunday's elections will give a 1st taste of the country's appetite for political change earlier my colleague rory sushi spoke with 2 german m.p.'s from one of the country's main opposition parties alternative for germany touching on topics from domestic politics to covert vaccinations. but how would you comment on the recent attempts by germany's domestic intelligence agency to put your party the a.f.d. under surveillance a secret service. they do to learn to several times and to pass no they destroyed the republican party and the ninety's and later also did and.

also with the same methods i've d. has in its rings neither less nor more extremists compared to society average because our party also is some kind of image of society or on the average league ation sort of the same purpose to eliminate political opposition in drew near or at least to oppress it for the benefit of our rotten political system do sanctions work do they help or do they hinder professional partnerships do you think sanctions is not the right approach because if you want to have good relations with russia that are meant to be productive we shall have open conversation. being myself a person from the west i must ask the question sanctions always punish somebody for for his behavior is the west innocent himself that's a question all the west is not innocent himself and then why does the west dare to punish russia with as if the west were

a morally hiring institution. video agency ruptly they were notified by commerzbank that their bank accounts would be closed by the end of the spring now russia's foreign ministry has slammed the move as politically motivated how would you view that not to do it and is having the same who has happened to all of my colleagues to all m.p.'s of of all parliamentary group of alternative for germany party since 2018 all our private bank accounts that we held by the in spring or impost bank were closed so and this was or obviously political. it so what is that all happening with your subsidy recover happened with us in germany being a piece in your opinion what why is it taking so long for the e.u. authours to rule on whether sputnik very russia's vaccine can be used i mean it's politics playing

a part in this do you think so the process is being hampered by white saw the result of my personal analysis is that western companies manufacturers like pfizer like more dare not like us for them because they make huge a huge amount of money by bricks in a team you consider themselves and make sure there were some kind of competition in the do you market of we have a free market it should be a free market that should be a free competition of all the vaccines and the people should be informed about all those folk scenes i'm afraid that it will take some time because this is again a political issue and also the issue of money and all the best on a farm on a low b. is strong they will push it so on they will try to prolong the whole procedure. and the word normal is being dropped from all skin care products made by the

consumer goods giant unilever u.k. based firm claims the word makes customers feel excluded we know that removing normal from our products and packaging will not fix the problem alone but it's an important step forward the company told customers and found more than 2 in 3 people thought using the word normal had a negative impact you know lever also says it is ending the excessive airbrushing of models in its advertising but there has been a backlash against the moves. so sick of woken us taken to p.c. extremes normal means not only and not dry do we have to turn every term on the planet into enclose it take i've never been able to use normal shampoo but at least i know that it isn't suitable for my dry and hair thank god i have always felt marginalized with my dry scalp every time in the shampoo aisle i would have to seek

out a safe space because of the pain and anguish caused by seeing the word normal and my inability to ever have normal hair unit leverage just saved my life this is not the 1st time you know a lever has courted controversy last year and faced a huge flak over its marketing of skin whitening products in asia who put the issue about dropping the word normal for debate. there's no way ordinary people think this in those kinds of numbers when it comes to the word normal the other thing about using models and changing the shots oh i agree with but the normal thing this is purely them over reacting to the trouble they landed themselves in i think it's important that they are talking about this and they are going to do this because. it's needed we need to keep pushing change in the industry i mean you know body and and we have probably one of the most inclusive agencies and i don't think enough times are doing enough to how that can haynes inclusive and stay away

from normal this is marketed this is a bit like we're going to change tomato sauce so it's going to be green we're going to turn salad cream into a different color we're going to start making solid cream this is just a pathetic attempt to grab more market share and also so i can i disagree i don't think that's that's you know i think if they were leaving the room to go i always know it doesn't i disagree so i die i have to agree and then i mean we we've recently hired a model who went through her accident she has to be scarring she actually you know think. she is doing very well now a fee is going to be shocking to say this is imposed and this is what we should be seeing and i think removing normal is important for a lot of people have asked so i had great. there's the idea of normal i would agree with you that if somebody has got a disability or whatever could do not understand what they call the motos or take

on board completely but it's the word normal when it comes to things like shampoo for a normal hair well it is are the normal greasy or dry all cracked or damaged and i think doing what they're doing or they're talking about removing almost stopping editing and editing especially on social media this is you know there is a definite trend against that. and i think what they are doing is a step in the right direction it is not the be all and end all but it is moving forward so i think it's a good indication i don't think they're necessarily doing it to ground price i think it's needed doing this purely to get market share and they're doing it purely because of their offensive products that they had before 10000 people i'd love to see the steps of let's see the demographic of the 10000 people that they asked him whether they confuse the question ability or being confused or not my friend what you think it's about normal imagery would talk about the would normal i don't

object to any of the rest of it but the word normal it's well known since it's all done for marketing and you shouldn't be falling for it because then they can and will give you 30 minutes will be back with another look at you news stevenson's argentina. when i was still seems wrong. why don't we all just don't call. me. yet to seep out just to come after. and in detroit because the trail. went on many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. but rather stand her in her.