which took place late on saturday evening after a brief announcement from the prime minister natalie bennett, that israel needed to act very quickly in the midst of all this uncertainty and not risk the progress already gained against the current of iris pandemic. and so the measures nascar extremely stringent, all foreign travelers into israel will no longer be allowed in that is quite soon after foreign tourism was allowed again towards the beginning of november. and army kron has been detected in more parts of europe. the dutch government believes several cases are among travellers in isolated after arriving from south africa, which 1st identify at the very end. south africa government is complaining about the way it's been treated since selecting the world about the variance says country should be congratulating it's not punishing it. hundreds of demonstrates is blocked major roads and the serbian capital protest against mining project. some fort with the police critics and upcoming referendum worry a yes. will allow foreign companies to mine to freely in serbia and plunder its resources. the government says mining projects are crucial for the economy. the reuters news agency says 6 to to these soldiers have been killed in an attack by ethiopian forces and says it happened at a super nice army post. protest as of gathered and peruse capital lima calling for the president petro castillo to resign. the opposition is trying to remove him from power, that questioning his moral ability to govern due to corruption allegations. earlier this week, castillo supports is rounded against and impeachment motion. those are your headlines. the news continues. after inside story more news on this channel in 30, i'll see you that. ah. the well faces yet another coven. 19 variants called on the koran. health officials say it's more infectious than previous variance. so how concerned should we be and our vaccination enough to contain it? this is the inside story. ah, hello, welcome to the program, i am hashem, abala, just as the world was starting to show signs of recovery from the pandemic, and you covered 90 invariants called on the crown, has been identified. scientists say it's more infectious than the delta strain and is unclear if the vaccines we have now will be effective against it. and while we're still don't know much about it, the global stock market price of oil and travel industry are already seeing its impact. many countries have banned or restricts it flies from southern africa whether new variant is believed to have emerged with begin our discussion in a moment. first, this update from the miller miller in johannesburg, frustration at janice birds international airport. as dozens of people try to return to the united kingdom, it comes hours after it was announced. a new variant of cove at 19 had been identified in south africa that led to the united kingdom announcing a new travel ban on people coming from southern african countries, looting south africa botswana and some bob with a bit inconvenience. we had our flight before a week time, but we got the news from our daughter in about 12 31 o'clock last night saying that you were going to introduce the red dress. it's on justified abrupt, and it's not good for tourism for south africa. with these regulations laid off last night, people up front to keep trying to get back into the south. african scientists say they're worried, existing vaccines may not be effective. and the new variant may spread easily. genomics and south africa has been outstanding throughout this whole pandemic period. and that's why we've been able to identify when changes occur, the fact that we are able to identify changes quickly is good news is good news for the world. but we must be careful that we don't then jumped the conclusion of, well, that equals, it came from here, it came from there. and it means that we need to understand much more about this. so far, dozens of infections have been identified in south africa. while in botswana, the government says the new virus was found in several foreign nationals on a diplomatic visit. while the south african government says it respects the decision taken by the u. k and other countries to limit travel to and from the region. and that precautionary measures may be necessary. it says the decision is rushed the action of countries in terms of imposing travel beds and such measures are completely against the knobs and standards. as guided by the wealth organization, a possible 4th wave, compounded by the new variant may further strain and already overwhelmed health system in south africa. the leader miller, i'll just 0 janice, but ah, let's bring in our gas in johannesburg, helen rees, chair of the world health organizations, regional immunization, technical advisory for africa, and member of the south african ministerial advisory committee for covey and covey vaccine. a last so u. k. julian tang, clinical biologist of the university of lester and robert, as the dean abraham, a director of med biotech and medical biotechnology laboratory. thank you all for joining us. helen. since the new variant army crohn was identified, it's panic and exile. anxiety globally is because of the mutations themselves or because this is an uncharted territory for the health community. when i don't think it is an uncharted territory anymore. unfortunately, i think we've had quite a lot of these scares that the emergence of new variance, if we recall good thinking back to what happened in india. so it's not uncharted, but it is concerning. and we're going to have to do a lot more research to really understand what this new variant it actually will mean, both in terms of severity of disease, chance mr ability and the action of vaccines, and whether people can get reinfected. lots of questions to ask julian, the w h o labeled omicron as a variance of concern, which basically means is contagious or could be more virulent if it's both cases. what does it mean for the world? yes. so the, the main concern is the vaccine escape capability. of central capability offers mutations includes the 417484. so it's a 5, a launch increases transmit stability. so we are familiar with these types of mutations already. and other variants, including the original b to set up can be 1351 variance. and we're now seeing how much more transmissible this declared from bus one or is that into the berlin. so it's more tricky because a comparing relative amongst different populations is difficult because for example, in southern africa we have a high, you have a high rate of having t b endemic infections that may cause different levels of severity for clinical illness. come back to western countries. where those 2 sections are not endemic. so comparison of berlin's would be very, very tricky going forward. as a dean, morocco joins, there are many countries imposing travel ban on south africa at this particular stage. give us a sense of what you think in, in morocco. i think about more screening more restrictions or revisiting the whole issue of cov, 19 inside morocco. well actually actually, i think that we talked about this problem before and we thought that maybe if with something is not done to vaccinate at the rate the speedy rate actually answer gets a certain percentage of the box. and he said, we have this huge risk, that's a virus or variance wouldn't be come in and we'd be coming back to square 0. and i think when you were asking your question, we don't have lots of fans. so the only thing that we know, i think so far that this warranty is in different places. actually, it's really interesting to see that a lot of people are pointing out to south africa. but i think the binge in cases are clear. maybe the virus was under the radar and maybe it was in other countries in more. okay. i think that is classical. now we know what to do is actually not lead the virus. get them quickly. actually in morocco we actually, the travel is really, there is some restriction, and actually we invite people to get vaccine. next. i think the true thing that we are facing right now as the vaccination hesitancy. and i think if we don't get a certain percentage, we'll come back to square helen as the health given to you is trying to figure out and discover more about on the chrome. so now what we know so far is this is very particular in the sense that he has a high number of mutations, particularly in its spike, which is instrumental to the entry into the body. what does it mean for people all over the world when suddenly you have this variant with a huge number of mutations in its key protein? the spike? well, we don't yet know what it's going to mean, but clearly we are worried for the reasons you said that the spike is a very important part of the virus in terms of getting entry to cells. but the other problem is that a lot of the. ready vaccines that we have were developed to recognize that spike protein and that was from the original ancestral virus. so if that's a spike has changed significantly because of these mutations. the risk is that the vaccines that we have might be less effective. and we very much hoping they will be ineffective so far with the other very and such as emerged. we've seen that there, although we've seen a reduction in the effectiveness of vaccines, they still remained effective against severe disease and hospitalization. which at the moment is this, that the world's priority to tackle. but we're gonna have to watch that space to see how effective the vaccines are and that work has already begun. i mean that one is big. this is happening as we speak. and the vaccine manufacturers, particularly pfizer, which has this m r n a platform, is also already saying, well, if we have to change the vaccines and can we do this and can we do this quickly? and the answer is yes, that technology has the ability to be changed rapidly and manufactured rapidly. so, so that's a sort of, if you like it as a bit of a good news story. should that be required? julian, the, the, the spike was the chief target of most of the pharmaceutical, or the vaccines that were stablish to, to contain a coven 19. and when you suddenly have this 30 mutations in this particular case of or micron, could it be an indication if it turns to be really virulent that pharmaceutical companies will have to revisit the approach when it comes to tackling the this particular variant? why don't think that the transfer approach, i think make it be selective, but no, all of those mutations will need to be match. so new vaccine to give a sufficient cross racks of protection against severe disease and death if the current vaccines originally devote to the will armstrong to the bars, but doing quite well against the various variants because not cross reactive immunity that they confer. even though the vaccine does actually contain those mutations, so you might find a so called midpoint of you, like those of you to is required for the core presence of new vaccine to give up cross cross production. guess the, the only cron new variant, but also to retain protection against order variance like alpha term with delta. but we've seen already as it in morocco, suspended flies with germany. you care the netherlands because of the surge of coven 19 cases in europe. back in july and august, you had quite a remarkable search in cove with cases and also mortality rate. now, i guess the backdrop of this new development about omicron, do you have real concerns about a new wave in morocco that could be further exacerbated in case our mcclung crosses the board. us? why have just to come back? actually, if you allow me to, to the vaccines recruit just to say that there is other vaccines that they are not targets in the spike protein. so for example, the single farm, the novel back, some other vaccines they had with targets in just the spike. and hopefully this got this vaccine under the secondary, she vaccines that would be really protected against all kinds of variance for, for more. okay. i think it's clear doesn't rule will not just by shutting the borders, the virus will not be then we, we saw that before what we are trying to do more gradually. it just to slow the speed by which the virus would it be coming. but i think what we have to do a just try to get a survey, not genomics or is very good to have in rockland, they think what's happened this cases, we didn't see them because they started. i think when we saw the failure genetic off the savari and it started on march 2020 since the answer. and it's really didn't arrive by itself. we did move our in. so under surveillance, the genomics are. this is a problem, but i think in her book we know this, if it's really around, the words would come to morocco, but i think that portion of that and the hopefully we can fight as we did with on helen. we have on it 24 percent of the population are now fully vaccinated and suddenly you have news about you identify this new variant. what does it mean for the, for, for the health system in south africa? well, it's very worrying, and we were previously getting some, a comfort because we also have high rates of positivity, syria positivity, and our populations because we've had high levels of natural infection. so people who got antibodies, some from vaccines, but many from having a mild to moderate infection, that the question will be whether we're going to see re infection. and one of our concerns at the moment is that we are seeing re infections occurring with them. with this new variance, which means that the antibodies from a natural infection don't appear to be given at least robust protection, there might give some protection, but not robust protection against this variant. at the bottom line for, for the african region, is that we need to be able to vaccinate. we had huge delay because of access. we had huge delays because people were slow or countries the slow to support the kovacs facility and put money in. so we didn't have the vaccines, we didn't have the funding at the beginning. now we've got them. one of the problems we've got is that we've got quite a lot of vaccine hesitancy in the region that people, on the one hand, in many african countries, people are saying, well, we're not really seeing this disease as this really affecting us. and so we've got a sort of complacency on the one hand. the other thing though with these delays is that a lot of misinformation was able to sort of go into populations just as we've seen in parts of the world, which is causing this vaccine hesitancy. but we really do have to get vaccination. i think most of us are still optimistic that the vaccines we have will give some level of protection even if it's partial protection, even if it's not as good against previous period. but we'll get some level vaccination coverage is absolutely critical. and so one of the things that we're going to have to, and we are talking about in south africa, a mandatory vaccination policies, as we've seen around the world in the meantime. 1000000000 the one of the serious circulating now is that army kron must have a forced during a chronic infection of an immune compromised person, possibly suffering from or being tree or of untreated is i v a case. now, if the body gets into that situation and then comes out, does it come out more aggressive? does it mean that vaccines will be less effective? does it mean that we're likely to see more mortality re skyrocketing in the world? is that this is not unusual to happen. case reports of chronic infections like this . we tribute developing similar mutations physician and a different variance. now this is quite rare, but when it does happen there is a potential for these mutations to allow in hast rasmus ability and especially in more severe disease. but also if you have too many mutations in the esper protein, which is the essential person to bind to the ac receptor, you may get an a loss of our fitness. and this has been discussed as well. so lots of our fitness means that the virus me replicates with several generations, but then start to fade out. we've seen this before. there's several of the variants like the that the proven variance n b to look in variance. and where actually those concern, if i didn't really transmit much young those countries. and so we had another kind of a silver lining to this as then it seems like somehow we're having a replay or past scenario when the moment or delta was identified, countries spent loads of time energy of resources, putting restrictions screenings, and then it took them some time to share information with other countries to be able to cope with delta, delta dominated headlines all over the world for quite some time. could this be another case where we are directing our efforts towards that direction when we should be now in touch with health communities, but in those affected countries about to and then if i better know and deal with on a crohn why i think a, you had it on that now actually, the thing is what we are looking for right now is how to deal with that because we're thinking that the scenario we come back every time i had to be playing catch $22.00, but they bang the fact each here and it's clear, we're not fire fighting, just the variance. i think the, the worst case scenario. what's, why i say in africa, because we were really lobbies, we didn't lot floppy isn't to get the vaccines to africa. and when you get the vaccine to africa and you see that people are hesitant and they are not vaccination . and they think we are confronted with the misinformation. and i want to be a really immersion to fear. but i think if we can not get to the people to get vaccinated, we'll see discuss 22 happening all the time. and maybe the worst case scenario with you getting the volumes that will be spread and quickly given your worst disease. and we escape and the natural and they acquired immune immunity or vaccines. and here i think we can after square 0. ok, helen will work with less than 6 percent of the african communities for live vaccinated you how this new variant is it about time to review w h a recommendations, particularly when it comes to asking wealthy nations to share their stocks of vaccines where the poorer nations to be able to cope what could be a nightmare scenario if on the cross pres, globally? yes, i mean, i think that we, it's a funny kind of opportunity, but we must use that the, the current concern about this new very and to try and mobilize around vaccine coverage in the african region. and we had, in fact, a meeting yesterday of the original immunization committee for w h o m, and the, the vaccines are starting to come. but one of the problems we have is the capacity of countries to be able to absorb the vaccines both from the point of view of storage, but also from the point of view of delivery. many of these countries have very remote areas and very difficult to reach areas. summer got conflicts and i would think that the, that in addition to looking hard and continue to support the supply of vaccines and the funding, what we really need to do is to work with these countries and put a lot more in to try and capacity them to be able to absorb and roll out those axes as axis are no good enriches. they have to be administered. we're also worried because the people who are administering the coven vaccines are now not administering childhood vaccines. and we're seeing big outbreaks now. of things like yellow fever, we've had big outbreaks of measles, and we're seeing a decline in routine immunization coverage in some countries. so we might be trying to fix one problem, but we're creating in the medium term, a huge problem in terms of other vaccine preventables diseases. so my appeal to countries would be that we have to invest in supporting particularly the least resource countries and was region to be able to roll out as vaccines. julian, when pharmaceutical companies, pfizer astrazeneca mcdonough, nova vox, so that they basically have plans in place to adapt to the new variance. are they talking about a new dose? are you talking about a new model molecule, makeup of the dose itself? are they talking about a booster? are they talking about a new approach that could really take more effort, more time to be able to have a new vaccine that go there will be able to cope with this particular variant? if it proves to be really aggressive. so those different vaccine approaches are not going to change what will happen, the change, the composition of the virus that dealing with. so for example, the amount of vaccines you can actually go them quite easily or include an anti virus back to back scenes. that the subunit vaccines that are similar to the flu vaccine, like the mobile acts that it will trick you need to then incorporate those mutations into the, the parent strain of the virus before you then that use recombinant technologies to produce that's purified protein. the aspartame with those mutations and then the whole virus vaccine, next rated approaches like beat on eva, and the sign of act. you need to then get some of that, that all swan and be 11529 virus grew up and massive amounts and then you can actually a whole lot purify and then you put into the vaccine. and those take longer. the subunit vaccines, the whole aspect is to take longer to adjust the morning advisor to vaccines are quicker, but you still need to increase in to scale. that can take several months as well. look at least 3 to 6 months lag time before we get this fractions out on mass to the population against this new variable. as dean, you government should be now thinking about a contingency plans they've been promising people easing the restrictions now with army kron as a scientist. would you recommend against a shut and you shut down, particularly your main target? who may market? europe is witnessing a remarkable search in cove with cases from 700000 cases or weeks or something like 2600000 cases. wow, why can michelle really nice to be a scientist rather than the decision maker? because i think it's a really heading to make a balance between all they can amik advantages to communicate with europe. and on the other hand, the risk of having the virus coming here. the only thing that i'm really, i think the recommendation would be just, oh, we have to wait just a few weeks and i think we have more questions now than answers and more okay, that i think it's, it's stable situation right now. so what we are doing as measure right now will prevents at least 2 or 3 weeks to have a really, a virus spread in morocco, hopefully by then we're gonna get all the answer to this question. all right, helen, this is a pandemic that claimed the lives of more than 5000000 people and many thought that finally there was light at the end of tunnel. sadly, with this new report about on the crown, people have this sense that this is back to square one with just back to the 1st days of cove it for fear. do you share that sentiment or do you think this is something which has been a little bit exaggerated? well, i think it hasn't been completely well handled in some quarters. i think that we've seen even scientists use quite scare mongering language and certainly the media is doing that. or the other thing that we're seeing is the, the sort of turning countries into prior states. instead of saying, actually this is very good science. this is exactly what we want the world to do is to do good science and to release that science quickly so that we can respond and not stigmatize the countries that are actually doing what w h o and the member states, the w h. i have all us to do, which is be honest and transparent with data. so, you know, i don't feel that we're necessarily back to square when we were ret, we've learned a huge amount in the nearly 2 years that we've been at this. we've got new technologies, we can, as we've just heard a, just those technologies were able to do 0 surveys and we are starting to get vaccine coverage. um, i mean, if we could really, really push that fax in coverage. and i know from this region, we've said this to the whole world repeatedly, you know, you can't leave one continent out. this is not the kind of ours that will sit quietly where you want to leave it, even if you orders. if this is transmissible, it will spread. thank you. hadn't breeze julian tongue as the dean by me? i really appreciate your insight. thank you. thank you for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting our website a dot com for further discussion goes all the facebook page. that's facebook dot com, forward slash ha, inside story can also join the conversation on twitter or hundreds. and so i sorted from the house model by the entire team here in doha bye for now. ah, with there's a lot more al jazeera than tv with our website mobile app, social media, and podcast. al jazeera digital is a world award winning online content. and each week on portal will bring you the very best of it. they're trying to brighten the people to leave it to go somewhere else. but the truth is that they've got nowhere else to go. so if you missed it online, catch up here with me. sandra, got them on al jazeera. this is al jazeera, it's november the 15th day, one of a new era and television news. if you have known that that was the scale of bloodshed, would you still going to go to miss off and landed about a 100 meters away from us? we're on the front line, but it's on a different ami, a very, really coming our way. i was just over here gag by the police on purpose. ah, you out with our 0 offices in garza, our house in that building and the cover has come down. little before in human history has the once per diem environment, the arctic in such peril. hello again peter, they'll be here and joe hall with your top stories on al jazeera, the israeli government says it wants to ban the entry of all foreigners for 2 weeks . once approved. this will be the toughest travel ban announced anywhere in the world since a new highly mutated cobit 19 variant was identified in south africa this week harry force, it has more now from west jerusalem. will. it's the result of a late night emergency meeting of the corona virus cabinet, which took place late on saturday evening after a brief announcement from the prime minister natalie bennett, that israel.