there are a number of events plants about the day johannesburg pretoria, as well as jane caped on the main event. later in the day, in cape town where the city will be paying tribute to the late archbishop in entering an into faith service. and that really speaks to how the archbishop transcended race and religion and what an icon he was to people across south africa . not only south africans, but also globally. i want to bring in to people who have come through to pay tribute to the late archbishop rebrand errol. what it'll under us as well as reverend robin wright. as a reverend and working within the church. you've also spoken to us telling us about just the role that the archbishop played in terms of his, the direction he gave in terms of faith and, and, and the work that you do. what did he mean to you? yes, a thank you very much for the opportunity. it is indeed a sad day for us in the city of cape town, but also as a nation. but also i want to extend that to, to everybody around the world. it is a sad day for us where we come this morning to, to celebrate the life of archbishop

i want to talk about the reality of johannesburg, pretoria, and the rest and i want to look at and internationallyimed virologist in south africa. tell us the back and forth this weekends in south africa as they inform pros like you about omicron. >> well, it starts before thanksgiving. sequences were being distributed through the research networks that are focused on covid-19 before thanksgiving. we saw the sequences, and they registered to us as being of significant concern on paper, but then the thanksgiving day announcements of the spread of this virus through south africa really gave the entire world a head start. my lab is ready this week to do omicron specific experiments and it is only because the south african public health and scientific community shared all of their information about sequences as well as case numbers so early. the world got a head start, and we are better prepared to handle this because of their efforts. jonathan: when will we see -- tom: when will we see results from labs such as years? dr. pekosz: two things i'm looking forward to, next week will be important to follo

the last 12-24 hours, we are seeing an increase in the number of hospitalizations in the johannesburg, pretoriaa, which is tied to omicron. >> if we have one case, we should assume there are many cases in the u.s. given that, does it change anything about how we ought to be behaving as far as trying to curtail this virus? >> i wouldn't say it changes, but it should reinforce the fact, please get vaccinated. we know from studies that were conducted earlier this year and the last part of last year in south africa and south america where the beta and gamma variance were very common, these were the ones that had those mutations that enhance to the immune invasion, but they were not very infectious relative to the alpha and delta virus, so they in a sense got beat out. when we get the vaccine studies, we found that the level of protection to prevent infection was very low. they did not prevent infection very well at all. what they did do was actually prevented serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths. getting ready for this particular variant now in the united states, the most important thing w

and very rapidly, became the dominant variant, particularly in the johannesburg, pretoria area in southfrica. >> we don't know exactly the origin of this variant, but there are some theories that some of the variants emerging in south africa, including this one, could be associated directly with hiv. that people with that disease sort of can give the coronavirus a chance to mutate further. walk us through how that might work. >> so we know we have a lot of h hiv-infected people in south africa. and many of them are not on treatments. although we have the largest hiv treatment program in the world, around 3 million people are estimated not to be on treatment. and may not even know that they are hiv infected. and so with our people that are immunocompromised, tb, hiv, and other people who have got cancer or have organ transplants, the virus may shed for longer, in this group of people and escape immune pressure from a normally good immune response. and when you escape immune pressure, the virus can evolve. and this is probably what happened in south africa and maybe, you know, at a global

and very rapidly became the dominant variant, particularly in the johannesburg pretoria area in southa gray. >>> the omicron variant is once again highlighting the need for more genomic sequencing. this scientific process identifies covid-19 variants that may be emerging and is a key weapon in containing the spread of the virus. as cnn's scott mclean reports, many countries lack the resources to properly conduct this type of research. >> reporter: in the past few months, the philippines has seen record covid case numbers. and as officials try to contain the virus on the streets, inside this lab, they're fighting on a different front. >> the first rule in war is that you have to know your enemy and for us to know our enemy in this pandemic, we have to sequence it. >> reporter: in the battle against covid, the lab has the artillery it needs to sequence the virus, this tiny machine. the problem is that it can barely afford the ammunition. the chemicals to actually make it work. they cost about $900 for just a couple of hundred test samples. in a given month, they say thousands are needed

what we see is that potentially, yes, especially in the centre of the country, that is in johannesburg and pretoriasouth africa, we potentially have not passed the peak, and the numbers there are still increasing, but we still have a lot of spare hospital capacity. in terms of the areas that have passed the peak and what can be understood from that, it seems cases went up very quickly and burnt out quickly? firstly, is that fair, and what is clear as far as you're concerned now in terms of transmissible atty versus the severity of omicron? {lilia versus the severity of omicron? ok, so, the first — versus the severity of omicron? ok, so, the first place _ versus the severity of omicron? ok so, the first place that the variant emerged, it is in a province which is the home of the capital pretorius and the main economic year, johannesburg. and that area had a massive third wave of delta, we are talking about 70% of people being infected by delta, so, one thing that we think is that one of the reasons why it shoots up and then shoot down, the numbers here, it's because we have very large population imm

major cities, different branches of the diocese of the anglican church from the capital pretoria to johannesburg. kimberly, and fairly significant memorial service and interface service will be held here in cape town on wednesday. this is really to ensure that south africans can participate as far as possible, given those cobra restrictions and the limited number of people allowed in one particular venue. now this interstate service also speaks to who the archbishop was firmly rooted in the anglican church, but really transcending religion, unifying south africa and beyond race, religion creed. and then this is sort of the legacy of the archbishop. we do expect him to lie in state on friday for about 12 hours that way people can visit the saint george's cathedral and view the archbishop's party, and he will then be left in the church over nights alone. and i think the churches also made a point of saying deliberately that the church that he loved, and that's where he will be on friday evening before his funeral on saturday, new year's day. and that's to where he's ashes will be in turn for me to

a lot of people i've tweeted about this in recent days, the cases are collapsing in the johannesburg and pretoriaot there first it went up quick and down fast we are missing something about this ep demology that we're not understanding, it's causing a lot of sub clinical infection we're not picking up our it's attacking a spec percent annual quickly. we don't know, we don't have good ep deem lodgical -- epidemiological information. >> if you got the shot, you should be boosted by one of the mrnas, people are concerned about this idea if they're saying don't take the j&j shot if you haven't gotten vaccine nated. if you have, you need to get boosted with an mrna shots what happens to those shots? where do they go and what would you be telling and warning people at this point? i know when our schools got vaccinated it was all j&j, because it was all that was table i available to the teachers at that point >> look, i think anyone that has j&j shots, they subsequently got an mrna boost has good protection cdc send a strong signal about preferring the mrna vaccine by moderna and pfizer i think it's unf

johannesburg with lorenzo. if you're a monte, who is a professor of political economy, the university of pretoria and the founding director at the center for the study of governance, innovation in london, vicky price chief economic adviser at the c e. b are the center for economics and business research and a former u. k. government advisor. and in she's walker. we have the general talk, she to who is the dean of the school of management at the university of she's rocha and i thank all 3 of you for joining us today as a say, i don't think we're going to solve everything, but we can maybe figure out which sort of direction we're going in the run. so i'd like to start with you, primarily because of your title. you look at political economy and i've always thought of this pandemic. certainly the reactions to this pandemic as being almost politics versus economics, political decisions versus. busy economic ones has that been the problem, but it's a problem with everything. it's all been politicized. well, i think the politicization of the pen demik is becoming more and more evidence. and i think mostly in the 2nd pha