brazil and south africa it's hoped 3000000000 doses can be distributed globally but julie fisher is from georgetown medical university she explained why these steps have been taken. at this point a group of external experts will be consulted and it's a normal part of the process they'll be called in to see if any adverse events that were reported and were serious are likely to be due to the vaccine or to be unrelated and their advice will help decide whether or not the vaccine trial continues we are all familiar with my old verse of events that can happen after vaccination like fever or pain at the side of the injection to put a pause it has to the the event would be serious something that was perhaps related to. the heart the lungs the kid is another system in the body. that was really required medical attention and that was found to be serious enough to merit causing this very important effort to test this vaccine in order to make sure that the vaccine is safe and that the adverse events were not due to the vaccine itself there is a set of expectations to test the safety of any vaccine

let's bring in julie fisher she's associate research professor of microbiology and immunology at georgetown university medical center she joins us from washington d.c. many thanks for speaking to us and al-jazeera julie we'll talk about those rapid tests in a minute but we are coming up 2 years since the disease 1st emerged i you surprised that we've reached over a 1000000 deaths in this short time i mean it's clearly tragic we've lost this many lives to the pandemic and in most than a year from when it started i think what is most heartbreaking is that the the number of deaths did not have to be this great this soon we have learned so much in the last 9 months about how to slow down the spread of disease and how to contain some of the worst impact using those simple tools of public health but obviously it took a long time in some countries to make the decisions that needed to be made and there's still not complete adherence to even some of the more simple interventions like mass clearing in some communities where they can make a real difference in slowing the spread of disease to the most

continent should serve as a wake up call the number of infections worldwide has now passed 30000000 julie fisher is an associate research professor of microbiology and immunology at georgetown medical university she explained some of the factors behind the say which we're definitely seeing clear increases in.

julie fisher is an associate research professor of microbiology and immunology at georgetown medical university she explained some of the factors behind the said. we're definitely seeing clear increases in cases at a rate that does is even exceeding what many countries saw earlier in the summer in june and july so it's difficult to say that this is a 2nd wave many countries are still in what looks like the 1st wave other the pandemic is global the drivers of new cases in different communities may be very different and reflect the nature of the communities and the kind of meeting and mingling of people that is happening in those communities in many places after a summer lockdown measures in which people. restricted their travel restricted interacting with others socially the lockdown measures were able to slow the spread of the virus and dramatically in some cases slow the speed at which new cases appeared but as communities began to slow those rates and lift the measures and become more permissive in terms of being able to get out of the house being able to dine at restaurants being

vaccine is proved safe and effective taking its global target to $3000000000.00 well let's speak to julie fisher she is an associate research professor of microbiology and immunology at georgetown medical university she joins us now from washington d.c. julie i know this sounds ominous to a lot of people but this is the reason you do stage 3 trials right but what does this mean for the development of this vaccine. so this is exactly as you said the reason that there are phase 3 clinical trials it is to test both whether the vaccine works and is effective and whether the vaccine is safe at this point a group of external experts will be consulted and it's a normal part of the process they'll be called in to see if any adverse events that were reported and were serious are likely to be due to the vaccine or to be unrelated and their advice will help decide whether or not the vaccine trial continues judy i see this is the 2nd time now that this specific vaccine trial has been put on hold what would it take to cause a pause like this. it would take a serious adverse event so we are all familiar with

continent should serve as a wake up call the number of infections worldwide has now passed 30000000 julie fisher is an associate research professor of microbiology and immunology at georgetown medical university she explained some of the factors behind the say. we're definitely seeing clearly increases in cases at a rate that is even exceeding what many countries saw earlier in the summer in june and july so it's difficult to say that this is a 2nd wave many countries are still in what looks like the 1st wave other the pandemic is global the drivers of new cases in different communities may be very different and reflect the nature of the communities and the kind of meeting and mingling of people that is happening in those communities in many places after some are locked out measures in which people. restricted their travel restricted interacting with others socially blocked on measures were able to slow the spread of the virus and dramatically in some cases slow the speed at which new cases appeared but as communities began to slow those rates and lift the measures and become more conducive in t