Welcome to the program the European Commission has approved corona virus vaccine for use across the e. U. Brussels signed off on the drug after the European Medicines Agency gave the go ahead to allow inoculations for people over the age of 18 he was facing a storm of criticism for the slow pace of its vaccine rollout astra zeneca is the 3rd vaccine to gain approval after those from biotech pfizer and medan. Straight to brussels that we find correspondent teri schultz welcome teri millions of people in the u. K. Have already received this vaccine why is the e. U. Been so slow. Thats right phil but despite all the pressure and the criticism the European Medicines Agency is not in the business of apologizing for taking whatever time it feels is necessary in a life or death issue like this so today in our briefing yemeni officials said that the astra zeneca data was very complex and despite the fact that it was the 1st one that they started looking to approve they were still getting data as recently as this week from the company so they simply said theyre working as fast as they can to get results and that they cant be sped up by pressure. German and French Health officials have questioned the drugs efficacy in people over 60 so want to see about base age group thats right did talk about this today as well and they said that there seems to be some confusion about them having very little data about people age 65 and over and confusion that this data may have actually been negative so they said that only 13 percent of patients in the information that they received were elderly and thats why the there are reluctant to draw a firm conclusion about the results but they said that they already do understand that there is some protection provided in people of this age group and they said they will continue to study they will continue to receive data and may be able to come out with some firmer results later i also just got off a press conference with astra zeneca officials who were asked the same question and they defended their results and said that as careful as the e. M. E. A. Is being as i just mentioned they would not have approved it if they truly thought that this vaccine was dangerous for people of that age group with teri schultz in brussels on cue. Well that bit of good news from the e. U. Comes amid a bitter dispute between brussels and astra zeneca over delays to the delivery of vaccines brussels accuses the drugs manufacturer of failing to fulfill its contract to all obligations the company says it is working hard to overcome production problems but that its contract with the e. U. Requires it only to make its best efforts to supply vaccines with no clear delivery timetable redacted copy of the contract has now been published. This contract is at the heart of an ongoing feud between the European Commission and special swedish Family Company astra zeneca over delays in vixie engine to varies the e. U. Has made the contract public but many of the crucial parts have been blocked out by astra zeneca a scandal say members of the European Parliament. Because the fact that youre simply not except that pharmaceutical companies which gets a lot of european money to her experience how to money. Im not really. Its those who all of the information last week astra zeneca shocked e. U. States by announcing significant delays in its scene deliveries to the bloc especially because the e. U. Has paid hundreds of millions of euros to produce to astra zeneca projection and because supplies to the u. K. Do not face the same shortages the dispute prompted the use to introduce the scheme so monitor vaccine experts but the e. U. Commission emphasizes this is not an expert ban were not in competition or in a race against any country the only race were in this against the cyrus this comes as the block is facing criticism for its slow vaccine rollout which so it is states are relieved that the vaccine has been recommended for use in the blog this spider difficulties with astra zeneca its 3rd week seen to gain approval. Lets go to our own legal opinion from david greene who is president of the law society of england and wales and the senior partner at the london edwin co welcome to day w what do you think is astra zeneca in breach of its contractual obligations to the e. U. Well lets start with this weve seen the contract as you say its a redacted copy with some of the commercial arrangements redacted it is subject to belgian law and it is subject to the jurisdiction of the Belgian Courts and so that one as an english lawyer. Can give some views about the general contractual versions rather than the belgian or the the the base is the contract is supply its manufacture and supply the prices being paid for that in so far as that supply is not made that may put astra zeneca in breach of that contract but i would say there are quite a lot of provisions hidden here which may allow them to avoid liability. And as you rightly said there is a provision in this bill best reasonable efforts that is a defined term in the contract so that the parties that astra zeneca and the commission have thought about what are best reasonable efforts and its a its a its a its a catchall in that respect and it would be up to the court if it came to it to determine what best reasonable efforts means right so its not as much of a benefit just sort of what youve seen of these redacted got a contract it is not clear cut there is there is still an argument to be had on both sides i mean if if if necessary it could it could go to court. It theres no question about it turn that this is a fairly complex contract it could go either way there may be arguments on both sides i think the important point is that there is a provision that they can go to the Belgian Court in brussels presumably but that is really a last resort there are obligations tran negotiate a settlement and with an issue of this sort negotiation is the best way forward and courts should be regarded as a last resort trying to sort out this sort of dispute right so the other issue aside from athens any can supply contract with the e. U. If the Companies Deal with the u. K. Which astra zeneca says guarantees that the u. K. Priority of supply do you have an opinion theyre more well are i havent seen that in the in the. Commissions agreement if you believe thats a similar arrangement for absolutely they these are entirely separate contracts and simply because ive agreed to supply one customers against another customer doesnt mean i have i dont have separate obligations in order to for the u. K. To have priority there would have to be something in the contract which i havent seen. In a read of it there would have to be something in the contract to provide that the u. K. Had priority in some fashion but as a ses on a fairly brief read i havent seen right we heard in the report just before you came in we heard from an m. E. P. Who was upset that the contract had been redacted he said weve paid all this their money we should see the. Other good reasons for for redacting information from a contract such as this. Yeah one would normally see redactions from a contract because they are confidential between the parts is the price 8. 00 the basis is that price is usually kept confidential and indeed there may be competition reasons to keep it confidential so i would be both surprised had they published those elements of this contract whether that should be available to any heat in the European Parliament i think is another point that im sure that would only take place on a confidential basis thats very clear thank you so much for joining us i think the green president of the more society of 11th and wales thank. Turning to other stories making news around the world now a bomb has exploded outside the Israeli Embassy in delhi as it marked the anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties with india no injuries were reported but an israeli official says the incident is being treated as terrorism. China has announced that he will no longer recognize the British National overseas passport held by many hong kong residents the u. K. Government and as that it would open its doors to hong kong citizens after beijing imposed a controversial security law. U. S. President joe biden has reversed a ban on u. S. Foreign aid to organizations that before or promote abortions the policy slashed fundings to Health Services across africa study said it restricted womens access to contraceptives and leading to more unwanted pregnancies. And of course in the netherlands has ordered the energy multinational shell to pay compensation for oil spills in the niger delta after a 13 year legal battle the case was brought by 4 nigerian farmers who claimed their land was polluted the court ruled the holo shell was not directly liable for the leaks it was found by a duty of care the amount of compensation still hasnt been fixed shell continues to deny the accusations. And flourish of poor joins us from nigerias commercial capital legos welcome flourished so what does this verdict me. Well this means that we can begin to see some form of justice in the niger delta finally after several years of pollution of the area of course. We can see that last so far mas loss of people even ones that have lost income as a result of the oil there and this is a sign of victory for them that this is a step finally in the right direction for farmers brought this case i believe at least one has died in that the years since this is being going on. Now are likely to see more farmers bring cases against them yet so this is not the only case that has been brought in just the shell several cases that have already been brought both in the netherlands in nigeria in the u. K. And so yes were going to steam osamas drinking cases against shelf oh were also going to see more people being hopeful that theyre going to get justice at the end of the day because actually ted some of these cases could take years i years and some of them could lose hope in this process but this is really a sign of. My 13 years this case took if this case now done or they still appeals to come and what sort of compensation conformists expect. Well to be. Compensated however we do not know exactly how much theyre going to speak given and because also all that that shelby basically of the night. So. This goes by the high court in dutch they also 8 times that could be asked to take is to the Supreme Court so yes this is a. Sign of victory but it would still be a very long time before we finally begin to see some form of change what will show difference because clearly this is a oil that was pollution so why did show why was shell saying that this was not our fault. You know was saying that claiming that was gone by. Now some of those in nigeria respected them as 9 counties these are people that destroyed pipelines. Oil tried. To take joy illegally so they have many of these people for the oil in the. According to because. Shell was liable because of mismanagement of their own equipment so yes these people exist but then the cross is saying that theres not enough evidence of scale not to take. Flourishes to cora and legace thank you so much kyra. Thats it youre up to date ill have more world news at the top of the hour up next on. 19 especially as get you to get all the latest news of information around the clock on the website thats d. W. Dot com today. The fight against the corona virus pandemic. Has the rate of infection in developing what does the latest research. Information and contact the coronavirus up to. 19. On t. W. Children to come to. One giant problem and when youre in no mood to see a picture you. Keep changing if youre counting. How will Climate Change affect us and our children. And d. W. Dot com slash water. Its a race against the clock as new mutations continue to evolve. Health officials blame high infection rates for the new strains. Each new infection opens the door to unknown variants which threaten to undo the progress. There is no clear real danger of mutations making the virus mortars miscible more lethal and more resistant to existing vaccines. Remaster. Understanding whats driving the buyers is mutations a crucial next step in a race against covert 19. Imitations of seeing the virus spread like wildfire in parts of the world but more help is on the way the u. S. Biotech firm novak says developed a vaccine demonstrating it was 90 percent efficacy in a phase 3 trial and proving successful against variance its the mutations that Scientists Say we need to keep an eye on. Last week if you work for a g. s Member States to do more on sequencing the genome of the Novel Coronavirus the hope is that scientists can detect mutations earlier and keep track on how they spread. So far major new variants have been identified and south africa. And in brazil all of them are cause for concern as they spread much faster. The reason is a mutation in the socalled spike protein that helps them attach more easily to human cells. The changes are not believed to cause a greater severity of illness at the higher rate of transmission in small cases putting even more pressure on Healthcare Systems in many countries there are already shortages of ventilators intensive care units and staff. Plus slowing down the spread of those new strains would require even more stringent lock down measures. Initial studies have shown that biotech pfizers covered 19 vaccine is likely to be effective against the variant found in the u. K. But scientists warn that may not be true for the strain found in brazil this subtype even seems to be spreading and monaulos where 75 percent of the population had previous exposure to sas kovi 2. That could mean 2 things Scientists Say either that people remain vulnerable because their 1st infection was too long ago or that the virus has mutated to such an extent that its resistant to existing antibodies. Pyrolysis are still conducting research into what that would mean for the efficacy of the vaccines if it turns out that they do not provide protection against this new type of koran or virus the vaccines would have to be updated. The good news is as the biotech fires a vixen and the one made by madonna you synthetic messenger r. N. A. Or m r n a they can both be quickly adapted scientists have suggested the changes could be made in as little as 6 weeks but testing the new vaccine and authorizing it might take much longer studies are various computational geneticist at harvard and was voted time magazines 100 most influential people doctors of you sequenced ebola samples from patients marking the 1st indepth use of real time d. N. A. Sequencing in a pandemic hows that changed our approach to the corona virus. I mean it is its a fundamentally different world where we dont know 6 months after an outbreak passes we dont find out what happened we can actually. Respond to it right away basically the genome of the virus is the blueprint its you how we track it how we diagnose it and how it evolves over time so we want to get real time snapshots to know what the virus is doing in every moment and to constantly develop countermeasures that target that virus so we would see later we missed the boat i mean you sequenced ebola really on the on. Did do we miss out in this case no actually we were very fast in our genome sequencing the original discovery of the virus that was one of the really sort of sad things about this is such a missed opportunity because we actually looks like we caught the virus very soon after it entered human populations and began sions many thinking the human problem is that respiratory viruses move quickly and so even though we were very fast we had to be lightning fast and while the sequencing in the original instantiation was actually where it needed to be our ability to then turn those into diagnostics actually did that quickly to but then to get those diagnostics everywhere in the world so we could find it when it came that was where we dropped off thats what we missed the boat so you know the United States being a famous example of that you know going backwards where we were just months into the outbreak still didnt really have any past it to look for it and even had some regulatory challenges and things like that that was that was what needs to change Going Forward but actually the original sequencing was right on we still theres a lot we can do to keep up that sequencing to figure out as this virus is really the millions of chances to move we need to keep up with it even faster the british brazilian and South African variants for sign to specific virus lines but no direct ancestors were identified house that problematic. You know its just telling us that were not capturing enough information that we essentially we dont know where the virus went 1st and how it got there so were still things were doing or sequencing than weve ever done before but were you know in millions tens of millions of cases now so its its a whole different world of how much you need to capture to really see what this virus is doing and just relative to the amount of cases were still sequencing very little you said where a race against time is the virus may stumble upon a mutation that makes it more dangerous how much time do we have its hard to know thats the thing at basically you know time we should move immediately this is the way it works is every time a virus replicates in transmits to the person theres opportunities for new mutations to occur most mutations dont have a real biological side but if you give it millions of chances to happen even the most rare event can happen and so every in every new case is a new opportunity to the virus to stumble upon something you know and where were worried now because the viruses you know looks like its more infectious and looks like it can escape immune system it could also change and somehow begin to affect our children we dont know where its going to go so we dont really want to waste a moment to find out a guest on this show told me taisha is what like clockwork why then come we predict them better. Well we can predict how often will likely occur and what we can predict. You know we can we can predict essentially like they do it works like clockwork or certain every kind of every cycle theres a certain opportunity for infections to happen and so we have a sense of how many titians will come and we just dont know the by a lot that we dont know we know some of it were learning we know we Pay Attention to the ones that are in the spy protein because we know thats going to affect the its how its going to that cells and theres Different Things were were were paying attention to but we dont know the full biological logic of the genome and how it works and which exactly it has which biological that thats part of what some of these studies are doing when they do gain a function to try to see what happens but those are those are challenging for various reasons so were still not there yet but the more we study the more we know when the more we can predict and when vaccinating how much higher is the risk of being taishan if someones got the 1st dose but the seconds being delayed when when it comes to a 2 shot vaccine you know we dont we dont really know i mean i think that the more i mean system thats it down early the less chance it has to change and so so you know the best thing we can do is to prevent the best thing we can do is to prevent infections and and to sort of shore up so that our infection doesnt go to anybody else so those are kind of the things where its like farming system thats a down or we quarantine well and that new variant doesnt dont go anywhere and thats the best and we can do participate he from harvard thank you very much for being on the show today thank you. Let me hand you over now to our science correspondent Eric Williams hes got answers to your questions on the corona virus. If i get vaccinated its its that chance i could still get infected and fact as. Guests to the 1st and we dont know yet to the 2nd well have a much better idea about the dangers of both issues in a few months when when vaccination numbers really climb in a serious way worldwide i think the confusion about this topic is closely tied to how we use the words infected and infectious lets look at the word infected 1st its used in 2 different ways in it strict sense it just means carrying a pathogen that causes a disease but its often also used to describe symptomatically having the disease and after exposure to this pathogen you can theoretically be both or just one you can carry source code to and have symptoms but you can also carry it and not have symptoms maybe even after youve been vaccinated get back to that in a minute. But 1st lets look at the word infectious it means the virus is reproducing in your body whether you notice it or not and that youre shedding enough of it to pass it on to others we dont yet know if this is possible even after youve received a vaccine because although trials showed that sin they did people later very rarely developed symptoms of covert 19 those trials were set up to show whether they also acquired whats called a sterilising immunity thats when your immune response after vaccination wipes out any subsequent exposures so fast the pathogen never gains a foothold in your body effectively ruling you out as a playing and infection change but right now we still dont know if you could theoretically get infected after vaccination just show no symptoms yet still give it to others well have a better idea of when we see whether large scale vaccine campaigns affect numbers of new infections quickly and dramatically. Thanks for watching have a nice weekend ill see you again say. Pico africa. Back to 0. 15 when since we promise become wondering how. Its possible it cannot you could have a nice meal in Southern Africa for abolishing things stingrays like that to keep soil from becoming depleted to protect the habitats of wild animals said that a ancient skillet thats going to be using to sustain. Both future you could. Sleep. Carefully. Dont simply choose to do. Discover the. Subsequent. Documentary. The times when i ask him to join us or dealing with a new one i killed many civilians with him in the National Committee quoting my father one day and i was a student. I wanted to build a life for myself that these totally sudden my life became knowledge kind of. Providing insights global news that matters d. W. For mines. Hello all plotted president ial diversity that was the completion of a un report only environment so weak i reeled this way well ultimately it destroyed the foundations for a life. 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