Doses of vaccine are on the way to fight the highly contagious local variant of the boy and help millions of this way lives are fleeing poverty at home by crossing the border into neighboring colombia on foot now millions will be allowed to stay there for 10 years. Im off its good to have you with a swede begin here in germany and the mistakes of the pandemic today chance so im going to medical admitted to failings in the governments handling of the 2nd wave of the pandemic im told parliament that the government had not been careful or fast enough opposition members jeer as she defended the decision to extend the National Walk down local businesses are furious. Germanys streets will remain empty and its Stores Closed for another 3 long weeks at least because while in fiction numbers keep falling worries over dangerous me tysons remain germanys lockdown will be extended until sunday march the 7th but those despairing over bad penn demi care can go a week earlier than that to the south lawn schools and kindergartens will begin reopening in february already and the government has set an ambitious new target for this 7 day in fiction right chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament that while people are exhausted by the pandemic restrictions this is not a time to be opening back up again. Not with the others also of course to the research is still ongoing but we shouldnt doubt the assessments of many experts here in germany and abroad again i have only 3 mutations are more aggressive and significantly more contagious than the original virus which feels merkel in the state premiers haggled over the next steps long into wednesday evening the states insisted that schools and kids should reopen michael would have preferred more caution on this point by into giving in as shes done before merkel sought to remind the public of the thousands of lives the pandemic has ended in germany. Is the fashion. Well over 60000 people have now died they are our mothers fathers children relatives friends who we can no longer predict it morning game its always on our minds when we make decisions in this pandemic that. The vaccine rollout in germany has been much slower than hyped to the opposition its an obvious failure of the government. From pundit weve gone from masters of the pen to make last spring to europes vaccination stranglers today our Vaccination Centers have been empty for weeks millions of citizens stocking queues for hours on end and you say nothings gone wrong were behind remain behind greece behind slovakia on vaccinations. Even though his loans will begin reopening in a few weeks theyll be subject to strict hygiene measures many other businesses that will just have to wait for better times. So i was going to correspondent simon young hes on the story for us here in berlin so i mean what about these exceptions why will schools Daycare Centers and heres the laws why will they be allowed to reopen before the end of this was longer lockdown. Well brit i think with schools in kindergartens the concerns of the same here in germany as they are in many countries about children missing out on their education and theyre also missing out on socialising outside their families their worries about childrens welfare and about their Mental Health a deed and theres also the point of course that parents looking after kids at home are on the real strain and so the idea is that you know opening up schools again will be one of the keys to somehow getting back to normal eventually i think with hairdressers the arguments are less strong what the government is saying is that its about personal hygiene and also as they put it about personal dignity having a proper haircut is important especially for older people does the chance or does she still have public backing for this lockdown and we know weve extended it now numerous times. Well i think public backing ease holding up but it might wane particularly Business Leaders and Business Owners a very angry they wanted these restrictions eased quicker than these now show jewel to be the case if you ask people on the street they are supportive but many of them clearly are struggling lets have a listen to what some of them told us in berlin i would love to just go out and you know go to a cafe or museum or visit friends or travel freely and take a trip somewhere and just to get out of my apartment a move that some people are not that stable some of the real problems at the moment especially young people with depression its really tough for them because the Counseling Centers really close its probably also have to stick it out and see what comes it has to be over eventually by summer at the latest or even the spring if you can even see what its like im enjoying time with my child but im afraid ons musicians are from that point of view times are not so good at independence but this is a fight. Really have nothing to do but this state is also supporting us so. Its just like a long vacation really. Strange that long vacation. You know along expensive vacation for the state. So im in the german chancellors target is an infection rate of 35. 00 cases per 100000 people over 7 day period how far is germany from that. Yeah the target is 35 the current number is 64 thats down from a peak of 197 on the 22nd of december so it really is heading in the right direction now this number 35 new infections 8100000 people over a 7 day period is the target theyre saying that any given news municipality around germany has to achieve before they can think about a more general like pinning up of shops and businesses and there is confusion around this because the previous number that they were emphasizing was 50 new infections bonded 1000 diver 7 days and the reason its come down is because of the fear of the new mutations and the more contagious variants that theyre all thats why the government is acting as acted differently but it shows how difficult it is for them to communicate their message to the public when theyre having to make up and adjust policy is that ok so i mean young with the latest tonight from berlin so i mean thank you south africas president says his government has secured millions of doses of vaccines to fight a highly infectious variant of the corona virus that is dominant in the country Cyril Ramaphosa said the Immunization Program will start in the coming weeks beginning with help workers or more photos and made the announcement in his annual address in which he also promised measures to revive the economy and tackle record unemployment world does from d. W. Correspondent Adrian Krishi joins me now from cape town good evening to you adrian south africa is the african country hardest hit by this pandemic and one of the more dangerous variants was even identified there what did the president what did he have to say about this distinction. Im so anxious to get on that big Vaccination Program that the government says its working on remember a few weeks ago it was not so much pressure on the government because it seems they didnt have any plan and then suddenly they announce yes we may steal its we preach chased 30000000 doses off vaccine then last week the 1st batch arrived the astra zeneca have exceeded 1000000 doses there was lots of celebrations the president received the liver himself once just a few days back and your study came out that said well this new astra zeneca havent seen is not efficient at least against mild these ysis with this new variant in south africa so now announce they are putting these units in storage and theyre waiting for and youve exceeded the johnson and johnson vaccine you today said 80000 doses will arrive next week and then the Vaccination Program will begin but he didnt come up with a timeline and that frustrates a lot of people and its clear that Health Workers will be the 1st ones but the 2nd space nobody knows when this will start and that of course affects the brought up part of the population and what about his plan for the economy if he does he plan to rescue the economy from the damage thats being rolled by this pandemic. Well economic recovery was indeed the biggest part of his speech and the situation is a disaster every 3rd person here is unemployed if you go to a random hot were still in the country in front of it you will see dozens of young people offering their services they labor us we try to make some money was struggle so wife and in the past weeks and months you could see more and more people there so thats an indication the president listed a lot of the government interventions that they came up with and indeed the government came up with the biggest Recovery Plan on this continent and they pumped a lot of money and but the question is how much money do they still have they have some indications that are showing that the government is quite broke at the moment they delayed several major payments also for vick seems that many people here are waiting actually for a new speech of the finance minister then a things and then the next weeks to see how bad they can all make of damage really is do you think the president will be able to survive all of this politically well his ratings in south africa through are quite high the problem is his own party theres a lot of political fighting happening within its own party because one faction of the secretary general that is also lives 2 former president jacob zuma both facing corruption allegations in various cases and on the other side you have from up with that we tried to reform his own party the whole thing might escalate once again next week already because then jacob zuma the the former president is supposed to show up and testify at the state capture commission the commission he set up himself to investigate corruption that happened on that his watch now hes refusing to go there and if he doesnt show up then the commission could possibly request that he will be arrested all right you have your correspondent entering chremes joining us tonight from cape town in south Africa Adrian thank you. Are now to south america nearly 2000000. 00 venezuelans have fled to neighboring colombia to escape Food Shortages and hyper inflation this week colombias government allowed them to stay for 10 years total but its become harder to seek refuge there Nicolas Maduro is authoritarian regime has sealed business way those borders blaming the pandemic of the colombian city of who was once the busiest crossing point between the 2 countries he wus Johan Ramirez has been talking to some of the people who are now trying to get across the border. This is just one of the illegal trails that connect venezuela to colombia with the border closed due to the pandemic its the only way to cross. Around the frontier city of kuta there are more than 120 dirt roads like this its where venezuelans try to escape poverty. Others like 81 year old alias maldonado go back and forth between the 2 countries several times a week illegally so he is colombian but his family lives in venezuela today the police dont let him through. My wife is in venezuela because her mother is very ill. So i have to go from here to there even though its illegal because family is family. To bring the grandchildren something to eat. Venezuelan migrants in colombia get help from the venezuelans and. Established 6 years ago every day it offers free meals volunteers do the best they can sometimes they have enough only for a bowl of porridge but the migrants are grateful for the nourishment. Venezuelans are. Survivors of war even though there is no war many of them have high rates of malnutrition children who have not even received their 1st vaccination. Here we help them but the situation is getting worse every day. Closures do not stop migrants the organization of american states forecasts that during 20211400000 venezuelans will enter colombia most of them aim to reach the colombian capital. Has already embarked on the journey on food. They are traveling with the 7 month old baby girl but they prefer to living in poverty in venezuela. Sleeping outdoors is not easy one has to stay awake because the other tries to sleep sometimes eat sometimes you dont but we were living under the same conditions in venezuela. There are still many days of walking ahead for these. 600 kilometers separate them from. Meanwhile others arrive via the illegal trails the police are watching. But for them the journey is far from over. The top of. The fight against the corona virus pandemic. Has the rate of infection in developing. The latest research. Information and contacts. Information on the. Topic. Of. Danger a sense of smell is something many of us take for granted but what if it wasnt. A loss of smell the impact could be serious. Interest in eating into a deep depression. Lets look at the strange ways it is tied up with our noses and neural networks. Out of all the senses most people say they could do without smell but have you thought about the consequences for your life and job about 60 percent of those infected with the coronavirus will have had problems. For current starglider falling ill with covert 1000 was a professional disaster the 53 year old did not have severe symptoms what was left on able to smell or taste anything as the owner of a confectionery shop she needed to test the quality of her cakes and chocolates. To buy something and i think if i have a glass of wine for example at the same time how to taste a glass of vinegar i couldnt tell the difference but just that this is why it is both of them taste acidic but i couldnt tell you which one is vinegar and which is the one that. Sato says are symptoms or typical. Smell loss occurs when the corona virus infects cells that support neurons in the nose. Prescribe smell training as therapy in which patients rely on prescribe sense such as those of roses and lemons. Now. After losing their sense of smell patients can do to smell training to stimulate damaged nerve cells and start the process of healing or regeneration. Like the. Current star gazer has been using for a different sense a day to reactivate her sense of smell coffee cinnamon chocolate closer vanilla are her favorite fragrances its a slow process but she hopes male training will bring back her ability to smell and taste things and lets talk about losing your sense of smell with your of scientists rachel herz what id like to know 1st of all is if it could be permanent. So small loss with hope at 90 that we really dont know what permanent leaves so its only the end of 90 years though that weve been into this crisis and its certainly the case that with upper respiratory Tract Infections loss occurs but there is hope for regaining it in those conditions and i think that probably will be the case here as well and there are different methods that can facilitate that especially things like snell training some people being experiencing these 3 for months and months and months i mean a year can be a long time how how traumatic can that experience be emotionally and psychologically well its extremely traumatic and one of the problems being in this idea of permanence how long is it going to last is it going to be forever you dont know and so that uncertainty even as mortuary as the very traumatic to lose your sense of smell that people unfortunately dont realize because our sense of smell is connected to everything people assume its connected to can they smell fire or the gas that you know danger or the pleasure of food but actually is connected to our emotional life in very intense ways its connected to our social life its connected to our personal intimacy its connected to our sense of self and our memories and our sense of where we are in the universe with respect to other people on the whole world so it can be extremely ungrounded in and very very disturbing for people to lose our sense of smell so retro is this side effect of something youre a logical. So what can be 19 what seems to be going on is that the stars could be to virus needs to enter cells in order to in fact the host that has the human and the nose has a patch covielle the actually if it feel again thats where all factory censoring their arms are we to text mels also contains 2 other kinds of cells these also is and what are known as supporting cells and these supporting cells have a high number of the kind of enzyme thats needed for the state protein of the sars virus to enter in this case to receptor people maybe hearing about so that their virus can bind very easily to these cells and what happens is it causes disruption and creates inflammation which seems to be the reason why your factory sensory neurons shut down because thats where were normally detecting smells and then thats the 1st port of entry into the rest of the body so thats the basic mechanism so one of the things i have a kind of pet peeve about is people really need to cover their nose with their mouths because thats the primary rule of entry for the stars virus to get into you you know just came across one of those callings in a car always perform tell us when does this happen is this loss of sense of smell is is it an early symptom is some Health Care Workers have experienced before even testing positive i mean it could be a great warning in stopping the spread of the disease just like you were saying warnings of a bad smell of a fire of gas. Yes so what weve been involved in ive been involved in Research Conducted with Health Care Workers and what we found was actually that disturbance in the sense of smell preceded getting a positive test by the p. C. Ari her normal method of detecting you know biologically whether or not youve been infected by 2 whole days so this is actually a tremendous finding that smell osprey seeds getting a positive diagnosis and also preceded sort of feeling sick in other ways and actually is involved in about 80 ringback 6 percent of people who feel very mild symptoms or could otherwise be asymptomatic so having snow loss is a very very important signal to the individuals who 1st of all get tested and secondly to self isolate to quarantine themselves then because you want to be avoiding transmitting it into the population so if you can self quarantine at the 1st sign of notice things no loss thats really important and not only smell os but also alter smell 8 whats known as pariahs media so if youre smelling things that they dont smell right you know one person said to me everythings not like then if you are and so thats also something thats a really important signal Early Warning sign in 19 and we saw that in about a 3rd of the people who reported small dysfunction in our study of i dont know if its also a signal of old timers of bach and since disease but is it also a symptom of the new covariance. So just to clarify the per us near the altar sense of smell is not really so much as far as we know involved in alzheimers or parkinsons disease in those things where small loss occurs that is decades before we see other symptoms but if you ask a really good question about the other variants and i have to say that i dont know the answer to that yet there hasnt been any research that ive seen that specifically looked at what variant of the iris is causing or this star is virus red thats causing the elders and whether or not and how thats connected smell us thats a great question i unfortunately dont know the answer to that yet like so many questions in this crisis my last question can you fully breed train your sense of smell. So the good news is that because of the fact that its about her respiratory tract infection that cause a small loss you havent had neurological damage to the way that the neurons can get into the brain for detecting smell and so forth so generally speaking in these cases there is hope for recovery and the best method to date is actually exercising your nose where what you want to do is get a set a very distinctive smell so things thats not really different are that you remember smell believe different like lead then or mint and you know some the perfume or cloves and things like that and smell those sense multiple times per day smell each for like about 10 seconds and repeat that over and over lets say 3 or 4 times per day for about 3 months and then switch to another step and the good news is that although its not 100 percent effective many people start to see improvement in their ability to smell through doing this sort of smell training exercising of your nose so there is real hope you know and it doesnt take that long just as like as that you know a few minutes a couple of times a day and just have to keep keep up with ringback it and it seems whats happening there is its both training your brain and potentially causing your receptors to become re stimulated again reactivated to bring in more a little ability to actually snuff i revise there from there are scientists right for us thank you very much for being on the show today thank you very much for having me over to Derrick Williams now our science correspondent has been looking into your questions on the corona virus. Does the immunity require from the vaccine vary from person to person. Yes it does vaccines never provide 100 percent protection although a few that weve developed for other Infectious Diseases have come close but but everyones immune system is difference and will respond to particular vaccines in individual ways trial showed that even after being vaccinated some people who were exposed to sars kovi to ended up contracting symptomatic pilfered 19 but the vaccines being distributed now have proven to be pretty effective at preventing symptoms caused by most variants in most people and and some vaccines have proven extremely effective at doing so a simplified way of putting it would be to say that trials in some back scenes showed unvaccinated people were nearly 20 times more likely to develop symptoms of pope at 19 during the trial than someone who got vaccinated. But the really interesting point is that and trying to return to Something Like normal back scenes dont actually have to prevent cope at 19 and everyone if they can just stop symptomatic disease in most of us that would ease the strain on Health Systems and what would be even better is if that scenes could help slow or stop transmission of the virus so if they not only prevent the disease in most people but also keep people from catching at having no symptoms and spreading it subsequently unknowingly theres new evidence that with at least one approved back sane thats the case that aspect really is key because it would break infection chains to do that right now were still relying mostly on on blunt instruments like like masks and lockdowns and finally there are strong indicators that even if you do catch covert 19 after getting the shot at least some of the vaccines are limiting its severity so in other words the people who get the disease even after being vaccinated are rarely end up in hospitals. So this is who knows things watching stay safe and secure against the. Law. To the point. Of clear position from the International Perspective some of the. As covert takes an ever harsher told they are killing their hopes on vaccines developed in record time get in many places there rollout has been patchy the race for coke the facts seems pretty against for our top because some of the claims claims the looks of the common t. W. I. Whole. Life lawyer. Culture. Hair. Superfood stylish doggone job let those. Lifestyle good. Songs. Slip. Carefully. To good. Discover them and. The body. Subscribe to. Documentary. As cope at 19 continues to take a harsh toll many are pinning their hopes on vaccines developed in record time and yet in many parts of the world their rollout has been patching at best with deliveries from some manufacturers falling short of what was agreed europe is squabbling with the Pharmaceuticals Industry over whos to blame some poor countries find themselves shut out altogether in the vaccine scramble many of their citizens may have to wait as long as 2 years to get the job the World Health Organization warns no