Claims that the virus originated in the lab in hand calling on washington to provide evidence and masks by the 1000000 the challenge facing a factory in afghanistan as it works to provide much needed protective equipment. Welcome to the Program World leaders organizations and banks have come together to pledge 8000000000. 00 for research into Coronavirus Vaccine now this comes as europes worst affected country italy has begun loosening tough social restrictions and that means people can now go back to work visit family and some businesses are reopening after 8 weeks in lockdown alexia brian begins our coverage. For how good theyve been waiting for for 2 months. Old grandfather and granddaughter. Re united. During the korean teen we were desperate because now i call you can speak for how excited i am too excited we have only seen her with video calls for 2 months but it was not the same it couldnt be the same. Quarter when i saw her my heart stopped it seemed to be a century since id seen her after the longest lockdown in europe family visits ever allowed but only of relatives live in the same region. Elsewhere the queues were back at romes my new terminal station though its not just take it but temperatures being taken. By a lot of the but this obviously after staying at home for almost 60 days it feels good i feel good and i feel safe. Across as a lay more than 4000000 people were back at work as construction sites and factories reopened and restaurants were allowed to sell takeaway food but taking public transport is still being discouraged by government and mosques a compulsory when sharing public spaces and doors. Funerals remain limited to 15 people but the bereaved able to lay flowers on the graves of the dead the florists nearby carefully disinfected. With more than 210000 reported cases and around 29000. 00 deaths italys one of the worst affected countries government leaders fear the loosening of restrictions will lead to a resurgence in cases Health Care Workers are taking extreme measures to track infections isolate pastas and to make sure hospitals and overwhelmed again. Want to get every. Were being careful trying not to do too many things but at least were finally outside and breathing some fresh air families making the most of the sunshine and parks that have been reopened playgrounds remain off limits but some of them are happy because. Finally today they have opened a few laberge as he after having close to 4 months and a half even though obviously my daughter was disappointed to find the playground are blocked off there are many reminders that life isnt the same with school cinemas n. P. s is shot indefinitely but the sanctioned country has witnessed plagues before and recovered italians just need to find a balance between staying safe and embracing their new found freedom elixir brian al jazeera the search for corona virus vaccine has been given a massive boost leaders from the e. U. And other nations have promised to give billions of dollars to of research into the disease a Video Conferencing fluting president s prime Ministers Health officials and banks raised over 8000000000. 00 to speed up the process the United States where nearly 70000. 00 people have died didnt participate the World Health Organizations director general says just developing a vaccine is not enough john hall has more from oxford in england. Scientists here at Oxford University are at the forefront in the search for both a vaccine and for successful drug treatments that could be saving lives will be for a vaccine becomes widely available well earlier i spoke to professor Martin Landry hes heading the Worlds LargestClinical Trial for covert 19 looking at existing drugs off the shelf medicines if you like trying to find out whether one of them might be successful in treating covert 19 when i began by asking him whether he and his colleagues believe a vaccine absolutely will be found and what the timeline might be there isnt a guarantee we know from previous conditions with hiv or malaria that people have been searching for decades for vaccines and been unsuccessful despite best efforts there having said that theres a lot of signs of encouragement not only from colleagues and also oxford but worldwide and some people refer. To a vaccine i think race the question is what are you racing against what were racing against is the virus the impact of of the virus on Society Health and the economy not racing against each other to my mind it doesnt matter where a vaccine comes from a vaccine would be incredibly useful and incredibly effective. In addressing the challenges what the world needs almost more urgently than a vaccine in order to reopen in order to guard against a 2nd wave in order for all of those things to happen are therapeutics treatments a coup are even i think effective treatments are in sight and theyre critical theyre critical because patients are dying today and tomorrow and the day after and even with the best will in the world 18 months off having a scaled up vaccine at best we need treatments that deal with the problem of now well you heard professor landreau varies not looking for a cure all or a Silver Bullet what hes looking for is a drug that helps hes discarding the ones that dont hes looking perhaps for a combination of drugs. It might work the sort of combination therapy we see in some cancer treatments or in the treatment of a child and theres a sadly treatable h. I. V. A virus that changed the world nearly 40 years ago theres still no vaccine for it but successful drug treatments mean the world has learned to live with hiv well thailand has also begun lifting restrictions after a steady decline in the number of infections but many people need help putting food on the table and some businesses are expected to struggle. Has more from bangkok. As thais enjoyed the easing of covert 1000 restrictions many remain reliant on food handouts from charities and local communities and in some cases theres not enough to go around for those whove been waiting many closed businesses are able to reopen after almost 2 months of being shut but the state of emergency remains in place along with the 10 pm to 4 am curfew the ban on International Flights to thailand continues until the end of the month restaurants can have dined in customers but only one person per table and no alcohol for syria the pet soon on its better than nothing but it might be too late for one party or im very worried about the Tourism Industry ties dont have the same purchasing power as foreign visitors the chinese koreans and japanese spend a lot of money but theyre all gone i think it may even take a year for things to get better. The government will evaluate the situation every 2 weeks either determine to further ease the restrictions or if theres a spike in confirmed cases reimpose some of the rules while the government isnt very much focused on the here and now of tackling covidien one thing theres a growing concern about the future some businesses opening up is good news but this country is so were lying on the Tourism Industry thats add a standstill like the empty streets here in old bangkok there are many types of businesses connected with tourism so a downturn cuts deep into the population here we are an economy that depends a lot on globalization we depend a lot on the movement of people in tens of the pentagons on tourism i think contributing to 20 percent of the g. D. P. We also depend heavily on export pet grooming shops have also opened their doors the owner of bark lounge used her personal savings to keep the business afloat for her it paid off. A lot of my customers are starting to come back i think because my shop was closed for a long time during the temporary shutdown my clients had no choice since the government lifted some of the restrictions my customers are fighting to be the 1st in line thailand southern neighbor malaysia also began loosening covert restrictions most businesses including restaurants can reopen but some states are keeping restrictions in place they want more time to study the potential risks from relaxing the curbs back in the cramped low income neighborhoods of bangkok many dont work in the industries or businesses that every open so they still need the food handouts but theres hope that this is a 1st step that could lead to more restrictions being lifted and that they soon can return to providing for their families on their own scott hodler aljazeera bangkok. Some of the claims are also coming off in 3 nigerian States Residents of the lagos of. Will gradually be given more freedom over the next 6 weeks exercise and travelling to work will be allowed but schools and dine in restaurants stay closed and that address has more from the capital a big. There are people who are happy that some of these restrictions are being lifted but there are all its also a cautious optimism that our people in fact were really really afraid that this could be premature because youre talking about lifting restrictions at a time when. Corona virus infection rates are going high deaths have also gone high from the time the Nigerian Government imposed knocked down 5 weeks ago to this time i think cases have nearly. Multiplied tenfold in across nigeria so right now we just came back from town looking at some of these places after the announcement by the government that today people should start going out where they must yes a lot of people most people are where the mosque that we saw but there are people who are actually not wearing them and talking about social distancing its quite a big problem go to the banks you see how crowded these places are and how people were packed together we visited one of the major markets in a bill today and what we saw there was shocking a lot of people hundreds of people compacted in one small area trying to get into the market which by the way has not open yet as of the time we left that please so its its a bit warry for some people that this is coming at a time when these cases are rising and that nothing much is going on in terms of large scale testing what we hear from the government is a few 1000 tests can be done every day but the. Most states that have in the last 2 or 3 weeks been also recording serious cases for example the case of qana where unexplained deaths have happened in the past 2 or 3 weeks now be authorities are coming to tell us that these days most of these were actually a covered 1000 related. President elect tom says hes confident the u. S. Will have a crowd of virus vaccine by the end of the year and he was speaking at a virtual town hall meeting on fox news and some questions from americans about his handling of the pandemic rob runnels reports were joined now by president in a virtual town hall style event broadcast on the u. S. Television Network Fox NewsPresident Donald Trump predicted Rapid Development of a covert 900. 00 vaccine we are very confident that were going to have a vaccine at the end of the year by the end of the or have a vaccine by the end of this year we think were going to have a vaccine by the end of this year and were pushing very hard trump went on to claim that he was not told till late january by u. S. Intelligence agencies about the spreading coronavirus some reports indicate that those agencies sounded the alarm on january 3rd on january 23rd i was told that there could be a virus coming in but it was of no really important other words it wasnt all we got to do some we got to do something it was a brief conversation trump blames china directly for the pandemic he promised a report with new information on how it originated and spread i think they made a horrible mistake and they dont want to admit it more than 68000 people in the u. S. Have died from coal that 19 and the numbers are rising trump said the toll could reach 90000 higher number than he has cited before Many Public Health experts are warning against premature lifting of stay at home orders saying that could lead to a new surge in infections without giving any specific dates trump said the u. S. Needed to restart its economy soon we cant stay close as a country we can have a country left the president ducked a question about safeguarding vulnerable nursing home residents and called white house reporters questions horrible it is widely considered that the president ial election in november will be a referendum on trumps handling of the pandemic rob reynolds aljazeera. Chinese state media says the u. S. Has been throwing ground as accusations over the origins of covert 19 u. S. Secretary of state mike pompei it has said that there is significant evidence that originated in the chinese lab while the Intelligence Committee continues to do its work they should continue to do that and verify so that we are certain i can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory one that the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade have no reason to disbelieve that at this point is the Scientific Consensus was not manmade or genetically modified thats right i grieve that ive said ive seen their analysis ive seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly i have no reason to doubt that that is accurate that ok so just to be clear do you do not think it was manmade or genetically modified. Ive seen what the Intelligence Committee has said i have no reason to believe that theyve got it wrong welcome to the new year is in beijing with more on the reaction to pompei as comments. Theres been a escalating war of words between the u. S. And china in recent months and this latest state media editorial is only adding fuel to that fire so it was in the global times which is a Chinese State media newspaper and its published both in english and mandarin and both versions really had searing words attacking secretary of state mike pompei oh in particular they called him a liar saying that he quote is engaging in filthy behavior to mislead the public and that hes lost his moral compass theyve also accused Michael Pompei of really only being interested in getting donald trump reelected in the next elections in november and in store king and the chinese hatred in order to do this now this is in response to the comments we had earlier of my compare saying that theres significant evidence that corba 1000 origin aged in a chinese lab in the history of roller g. E. And beijing has flat out denied this its also denied that its engaging in any cover up or dissed Information Campaign and this editorial is really demanding that mike pompei and his colleagues really produce this evidence that they say they say that they have and they suggest said look hes really just engaging according to state media in a bluff in a big bluff and really just continuing this anti chinas Smear Campaign in order to divert attention from washingtons mishandling of the crisis back home well still ahead here on our israels political future is in the balance well have the latest on the legal challenge to a new power sharing deal also partially relaxes strictures but the government is under pressure to go those stories after the break. Further flooding in sunrise quite likely with the high ground or western side he also generating showers recently and in the forecast this is the forecast for tuesday so only a few down here rather more gathering on the eastern side of the mediterranean so that event will see the temperatures drop below the 2023 mark and those blue dots brought along by quite strong breeze they will swing through iraq and syria given that sort of pattern on wednesday leaving the sun to come up behind a drop in temperature all this while the clades been wandering around central saudi hes just going to make things a little bit more humidity things that he set up in riyadh about 35 in dark most of north africa now is bone dry which is no big surprise if thats true along the mediterranean coast and the wind directions been critical to how it feels here its getting hard to get in tunis and tripoli into the low and then the highest thirtys next day or so the cooling breeze that shows benghazi 22 dancer egypt and further south into the sahara bringing dust with it as for showers all along this part of next tauriel africa increase in the coming north but the progress is erratic focus abidjan on the coast the ivory coast does give you showers daily. Madagascar. A breathtaking tropical paradise. Or more protected. Interests. We followed their journey as they put their lives on the line to. Risk it all. On aljazeera. I am. Talking about you watching how deservedly so robin a reminder of our top news stories after 8 weeks in lockdown italy is starting to ease restrictions the construction and manufacturing sectors of restarting people are also allowed to visit family members. Search for a current virus vaccine has received a significant funding be used during a teleconference dozens of countries pledged 8000000000. 00 to speed up research the u. S. And china did not take pass and Chinese State media say the u. S. Has been throwing groundless accusations around over the origins of covert 19 thats a response to u. S. Secretary of state by pump claiming theres significant evidence the virus started in the chinese lab. On to the days other news now and israels political future could become clearer as Supreme Court judges hear final arguments about the legality of a new power sharing deal 8 petitions have been filed against the Coalition Agreement between Benjamin Netanyahu and benny gantz critics argue that that new yahoo shouldnt be allowed to form a new government because of his indictment for corruption hurry for cities in west jerusalem with more on how the Supreme Court might reach its decision. If there were clues from yesterdays deliberations and exchanges between the