the country for 2 weeks. it's the toughest travel ban so far since the on the chrome varian was detected in south africa this week. australia is a nice country to confirm sections from new variance to passengers coming from southern africa to sydney tested positive on the con, parts of the country have only just reopened for international travel. these very fast moving issue, but we will continue as we always have sensible, balanced, guided by the best possible medical evidence and medical expert advice that he's what is enabled to strive to be so successful through the course of covert to open, safely and to remain safely open australia joins a growing list of nations including the u. k. germany, italy, belgium, and the netherlands, which report in cases of the new variant, several countries of dock flights to and from solid africa. hundreds of health workers and 5 fi, his protesting and the caribbean island of god, against compulsory inoculations. the island isn't obviously territory of france where the majors have already been implemented. the rest comes just ahead of a 3rd and final referendum on independence. so dawn, so 6 of its soldiers have been killed during an attack by ethiopian forces. it happened at a sudanese army post, now contested border area. if you have the army chief denies his forces, had any involvement in the incident, an earthquake has just struck the western coast of peru, a magnitude 7.5 quake has hit. now the city of bunker, that's roughly 200 kilometers from the capitol, lima, it's unclear the extent of the damage caused. there are reports of the quake being felt as far away as columbia and equitable those headlines moneys. i will have more news for you here on there right after inside story. i'll see you next time for bye, for now. ah, the well faces yet another covey. 19 variants called only crohn health officials say it's more infectious than previous barriers. so how concerned should we be and our vaccination enough to contain it? this is inside story. ah hello, welcome to the program, i am hashem, abala, just as the weld, we're starting to show signs of recovery from the pandemic. and you covered 90 invariants called army crown, has been identified. scientists say it's more infectious than the delta strain, and it's 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 trouble industry are already seeing its impact. many countries have band or restricted flies from southern africa, whether new variant is believed to have emerged. we'll begin our discussion in a moment. first, this update from the miller miller, 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 coven 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. in moving south africa botswana and some bob, which is a big inconvenience. we had our flights booked for a week time, but we got the news from our daughter in about 2 31 o'clock last night saying that you were going to introduce a red list. it's on justified. it's abrupt and it's not good for tourism for south africa with these regulations laid off last night and people are frantically trying to get back into the south. african scientists say they're worried existing vaccines may not be effective. and the new variance 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 jump to the conclusion of, well, that equals, it came from here, it came from there. and it means that this all 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 on for some countries in terms of imposing and such measures are completely against the norms and standards. as guided by the wealth organization, a possible 4th wave, compounded by the new variance may further strain and already overwhelmed health system. south africa, the leader miller. i'll jazeera johannesburg. 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 cove it and coven vaccine. last. so you k julian tang clinical biologist of the university of lester and robert as the dean abraham director of med biotech and medical biotechnology laboratory. thank you all for joining us. helen. since the new variant army crohn was identified, its panic and exile anxiety globally is, 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 variant 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 sir. the are the main concern, is the election escape capability of central capability. all those mutations include the 417484. so it's a 5, a watch increases transmit stability. so we are familiar with these types of mutations already. other variants include the original bt set up can be 1351 variance. and when asking how much more transmissible this to clear varied from bus one or is that into the berlin? that's more tricky because a comparing relative amongst different populations that 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 infections are not endemic. so comparison of balance 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 coven 19 inside morocco. well actually actually, i think that we talked about this problem before and we thought that maybe if we something is not done to vaccinate at the rate the speedy rate actually answer gets a certain percentage to be max. and he said, we have this huge risk, that's a virus or variance would be come in and would be coming back to square 0. and i think when you were asking your question, we don't have a lot of fans. so the only thing that we know, i think so far that this search warrant 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, may be 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. 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, 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 vaccines that we have were developed to recognize that spike protein, and that was from the original ancestral virus. so if that's the spite protein 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 there will be ineffective so far with the other variants 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 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, 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 all 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 the is selected because don't know, all of those mutations will need to be match. so new vaccine to give a sufficient cross racks of protection against students and death if the current vaccines originally devote to the warehouse around the virus. but doing quite well against the various variants because that cross reactive immunity that they confer, even though the vaccine does actually contain those mutations. so you might find a cycle midpoint of your nose of mutations require to be incorporated into new vaccine to give up cross, cross protection against the, the only crohn new variant, but also to retain that protection against all the variance like alpha, delta. but we've seen already acid in morocco, suspended flies with germany, u. k. 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 be chron crosses the borders? why have just to come back? actually, if you allow me to, to the vaccines because 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 dad with targets in just the spike. and hopefully this got this vaccine on to the 2nd generation. maxine that's what it be really protect and it gets 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 saw that before what we are trying to do more gradually. it just to slow the speed by which the virus would it become in. but i think what we have to do it, just try to get a surveillance genomics. ernest is very good to have in rockland, they think what's happened this case is we didn't see them because they started. i think we went to the film genetic off the savari and on march 2020 since the answer. and it really didn't arrive by itself. we did move our in so under surveillance genomics or this is a problem. but i think we know that it's really around the words would come from rural, but i think that portion of that and hopefully we can fight as we did with helen, we have only 24 percent of the population are fully vaccinated. and so there 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. 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 have 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 giving at least robust protection. they might get some protection, but not robust protection against the 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 flow 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 is this really affecting us. and so we go to 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 justice, we've seen and 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, lilian, the one of the serious circulating now is that a micron 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 will 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 to those which you know, the different variance and this is quite rare. but when it does happen, there is a potential for these mutations allow and has plasma ability and especially in more severe disease. but also if you have too many mutations in the esper protein, which is the essential thing to bind to the ac receptor, you make it as a loss of our fitness. and this has been discussed as well. so lots of our fitness means that the bars may replicate through several generations, but then start to fade out. and we've seen this before. there's several other barrels like the that the proven variance n b to look in variance. where actually those concern, if i didn't really transmit much young those countries. and so we know that kind of a silver lining to this as then it seems like somehow we're having a replay overpass scenario when the moment or delta was identified, country spent loads of time energy of resources, but in 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 that if i better know and deal with on mc wrong way, i think a, you had it on that? no, actually. so the thing is what we are looking for right now. we know how to deal with that because we're thinking that the scenario will come back every time i had to be playing catch 22, but they bang the facts here and it's clear. we're not hard fighting, just the volume. think the, the worst case scenario. what's why i say in africa, because we, we're 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 vaccinating . 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, we're getting a variance 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 after squares, you know, ok, helen will work with less than 6 percent of the african community fully vaccinated you how this new variant is it about time to review w edge recommendations, particularly when it comes to asking wealthy nations to share their stocks of vaccines where the poorer nations to be able to cook, 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, those actions are no good enriches. they have to be administered. we're also worried because the people who are administering the coven vaccines and now not administering chartered 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 while resource countries and was region to be able to roll as vaccines. julian, when pharmaceutical companies, pfizer astrazeneca, mcdonough and of a vox say that the basically have plans in place to adopt the new variance. are they talking about a new dose? are you talking about a new model molecular, a cap 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, that will be able to cope with this particular variance? if it proves to be really aggressive? so those different vaccine approaches are not gonna change. what will happen is the change, the composition of the virus that dealing with. so for example, the amount of vaccines you can actually show them quite easily include an anti virus back to back scenes. that the subunit vaccines that are similar to the flu vaccine, like the modem of acts that it will trick you need to then incorporate those mutations into the, the parent strain of the virus before you then that user confidence technologies to produce dots purified protein. the aspartame with those mutations and then the whole virus vaccine, next created approaches like beaverton, eva, and the sign of act. you need to then get some of that, that was fine, and b, 11529 virus grew up in massive amounts and then you can actually a whole lot purify and then you put into the vaccine. and those take longer the sub unit back since the whole aspect is to take longer to adjust the morning advisor to back things up 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 our micron. 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 covey cases, from 700000 cases, a weeks or something like 2600000 cases. wow. why can she 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 the economic advantages to communicate with europe. and on the other hand, the risk of having the virus coming. the only thing that i'm really, i think the recommendation would be just a, we have to wait to just the weeks and i think we have more questions now than answers and more ok that i think it's, it's stable situation right now. so what we are doing as measured right now, we prevents at least 2 or 3 weeks to have a really, a virus spread in morocco, hopefully by then we go get all the answers 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 chrome, people have this sense that this is back to square one. we're 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 adjust those technologies, we're 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 a dinner 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 facebook page. that's facebook dot com, forward slash ha, inside story. you can also join the conversation on twitter or a 100. and so i sort of from the house model by the entire team here in doha. like for now. ah, a, the listening post cut through the noise. we're talking about competing now by seeing monday, being used to perpetuate there's competes, imperative, separating spin from fuck all 3 versions of the story and some elements of the truth. but the full story of amazing content. unpacking the stories you're being told, it's not a science story at all. it's a story about politics. the listening post your guide to the media. on a jessica with i care about help you with, with the rest of the world. we're really it didn't take you into a play, you might not visit otherwise at feel as if you were there. ah . and molly, insight into how he had helped stories on al serra there was growing global concern about the newly discovered only chrome cove and 19 vibrant governments around the world happen imposing new restrictions in response. israel is banning all foreigners from entering the country, but 2 weeks returning citizens will need to corn team. the cabinet has also improved a controversial phone monitoring technology to trace people infected with the new variant. australia which opened its borders into national travel earlier this month has also confirm new. in fact.