Welcome to hardtalk, im stephen sackur. Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny is the most resilient opponent Vladimir Putin has everfaced. Navalny survived attempted assassination by novichok, returned to russia and is now orchestrating anti putin protests from his prison cell. My guest is navalny s Chief Of Staff leonid volkov. The Opposition Movement has supporters willing to take to the streets in hundreds of russian towns and cities, but do they have a strategy capable of forcing putin from power . Leonid volkov in lithuania, welcome to hardtalk. We need to begin, i think, by establishing what kind of contact you have with Alexei Navalny right now. Do you have any means of contacting him . Now the only way to contact him is that his lawyers, not even the relatives, but the lawyers are allowed to visit him two, three times a week and they dont enjoy privacy during those visits. So its like supervised contact. But still, we manage, at least, to pass some basic information about, l
The american makers of the novavax Coronavirus Vaccine have reported promising findings from a large scale trial in britain, raising hopes the jab could be rolled out in a matter of months, boosting global supplies. A study was Strong Enough to protect against a highly transmissible british variant of the virus. Heresjon donnison. Another scientific breakthrough in the fight against coronavirus. This time, from the us firm novavax. Results of the us firm novavax. Results of the Companies British Trial showed the first proven efficacy against the new more contagious uk variant. There were more than 15,000 volunteers on the trial throughout the uk. 0ver volunteers on the trial throughout the uk. Over half the cases of covid 19 recorded came from the new variant. It is very significant because we were able to show that the vaccine works well against both the old, the original strain and the new strain, that had 96 efficacy against the original covid 19 strain and yet still had 86 efficacy
Now on bbc news its time to hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk, im stephen sackur. The roll out of covid 19 vaccines has boosted hopes the virus can be tamed, but it will have to be a worldwide effort if its to be effective, and right now the signs are not so good. While tens of millions have already been vaccinated in the rich west, the worlds poor are facing a very long wait the phrase Vaccine Apartheid has already been coined. My guest is the chief scientist at the world health organization, dr Soumya Swaminathan. Is Vaccine Inequity undermining the fight against covid . Dr Soumya Swaminathan in geneva, welcome to hardtalk. Hello, stephen. Thank you for having me. Its a pleasure to have you on the show. Lets start with an overview. Is there any reason to believe that we are getting on top of this Global Pandemic . Well, one year ago, the Director General of the who announced that this covid 19 was a Public Health emergency of international concern. That was on 30 january, 2020. And he sa