Transcripts For ALJAZ Inside Story 20240712

Half past the hour on aljazeera these are the headlines white house adviser Stephen Miller has become the latest trumpet ministration official to test positive for covert 19 the man seen as the architect of Donald Trumps and immigration policies about a dozen white house officials have not tested positive including the president and top pentagon officials are in quarantine after the u. S. Coast guards 2nd in command tested positive mike hanna has more from washington. Steven miller whos a very close advisor of the president has now tested positive for the coronavirus has been in close proximity of the president for a long period of time he was also in close proximity to some of the other assistance to the president to have tested positive in recent days and certainly that list is growing and growing indeed a large number of members of the president s staff now have tested positive a number of journalists who work there and as well as a number of military aides it is said who are also working at the white house kyrgyzstans prime ministers resigned after widespread protests over sundays disputed election the countrys Election Commission is now an old the early results from the vote process the stormed state buildings in early on tuesday representatives from libyas rival administrations have agreed on the appointment of high profile positions from the un recognized government in tripoli and the eastern base to brook government had been holding talks in morocco turkeys foreign minister is criticizing International Efforts to end the conflict between azerbaijan and armenia. Says diplomacy has failed to resolve the decades old conflict over the region of nagornokarabakh those are your headlines the latest edition of inside story is next. 3 virus hunting scientists win the nobel prize for decades of research into hipaa to see with millions of lives saved and hope for eradication why is there were being rewarded now and what. About the fight against covert 19 this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program. In doha as the world battles and u. N. Deadly pathogen 3 scientists have been on earth for their work on a virus thats above its people for decades to see. Michael holton and Charles Weiss sharing the nobel prize for Medicine Research dating back to the 1960 s. Successfully identify the virus limited its spread and let effective treatments but as with the new corona virus theres no vaccine hepatitis c. It causes potentially fatal Liver Disease its transmitted through budget if you know its including blood disorder says while medical advances have improved our weapons against viruses political will is whats needed to defeat them the issues now are really not science anymore the science and hepatitis c. Has gotten to the point. We dont really need better drugs than we already have we dont need better tests and we already have what we need is the. The. Political will to eradicate. His fellow laureates professor vice believe its a likely hepatitis c. Will be eradicated by the double target in 10 years he says thats partly because many countries have banned research on chimpanzees which is more effective than studies on rodents. One of the challenges with maxines is really sort of having a predictive model and which to you know sort of test your ideas and your vaccine candidates and. Certainly one of the aspects of that that is fluid process is so that process is these are in ability to sort of use. Primate models for those kinds of. Us. So as you can probably glean from whats happening with the of the 19 vaccine efforts there are a myriad of different platforms that could potentially be. Used to develop a vaccine also against. Against appetite a seed mage actually take even one of the one that it takes to. Get it into the clinic is very difficult. Lets bring in August Stephen who. Is an associate professor at Leeds University and the Virus Division of the u. K. Microbiology society in its borne philippa is a brook is an epidemiologist and scientist with the World Health Organizations global hypnotises program and joining us from in the u. S. State of vermont is dr bob arnot former chief medical correspondent at n. B. C. News welcome to the program stephen quite fascinating the law journey it took the scientists to understand the disease and also the swedish while academy to recognize the legacy. Yes thats right i mean ive worked in that to see for Something Like 20 years now and of course it was you know theres no discovered back in 1909 so its probably a good time now to recognize that now we have these new drugs and different treatments for patients which is a fantastic advance and largely thanks to the Prize Winners that were talking about today philippa 8 the Swedish Royal Academy is no 4 taken way too early some time before recognising the work done by scientists is it because that in this particular field you need more time to verify the scientific Scientific Research and its impact. Well i think this is very much what weve seen in there the whole history of the nobel prizes the pave the recognition comes long after the original work was undertaken but i think what we are now seeing that happen i did see is the direct different items of their accomplishments and identifying the causative virus in identifying a diagnostic test and then following that the the development of antiviral treatments the targeted have the time to see and so we are now being able to reap the full benefits and see the full outcome of that their contributions and we now have these highly effective treatments. A diagnostic test that was able early on to immediately screen blood products and stop important transmission on the 3 of the virus but with the names of the 3 scientists all to holton and dries came out i think the 1st suppressing among many people was basically that these people made some seminal work offend you get the impression that this achievement was somehow overlooked or overshadowed by other achievements and this explains why i think it took the Swiss Academy the time to say finally you know what its about time to all of these people. Are the is that these are very very good you know it just has so many things going on and so much of what your biology is stunning advances was sort of left in a backwater for many years ago you know what they did back then 3 done in a very short period of time now is you know much sequencing fantastic speed but you know the nobel prize when i listen to the last i did and theyve been said you know were very careful you know we really want to make sure that we get this one right and you know its a tribute about as a lot of us leave though our lives as a very researchers and medical doctors are proud cast journalists and we have a little achieved. Its all way along the way that will make us feel good about our careers these people were out in that dark i mean they were larry having no idea theyd ever find anything and what are your devote your lives to a cause like that. Those many years that much doubt we ever find anything i think thats really the test the nobel and remember too that 1st day they knew they were selling the bloody no idea what it was and finally the 1st which are 5 stuff finds that 2nd one then finds the antibodies thinking about the test and then the 3rd one years later then finds the therapists are very long strength but you porton so it has which is so critical is that there are still 70000000 people in the world today were trying to have potentially and there are nearly 400000 deaths which is utterly and completely inexcusable given the availability of drugs which are just too expensive for them so many parts of africa nation stephen we all love those discoveries the make the world a better place to live in and what is interesting about these 3 scientists is that when you look of them they will work in different wells with different perspectives all to show that the blood for the hepatitis patients could transmit the disease and then horton isolates of the gene it genetic sequence as mice provided the final bit of the puzzle by showing how the virus alone could cause the disease i mean quite remarkable how separate works brought together that discovery that made an impeccable change in the world. Thats right and it has. And each of these discoveries preceded more another and they will try to. And it. Speaks to the difficulty it working but its been secure a lot less i mean even. Since. Something light and 1617 years boogity can grow to mars and so since then which wouldnt have been happening apart from these these 3 discoveries thats when the Drug Discovery process really kicks in and the regular Drug Discovery against this virus has been. Transferred to the successful but also very compressed period of time considering other viruses that we sayn and so these these terrorists really are. A tremendous success around cigar discovery but its really actually just not the finest lots of people are infected with this iris we have a disproportionate z. And there is less countries and we really still do need a vaccine. Working very hard now. For the why is it why is this fight far from over because when you look at places like egypt. And where the infection rate is really increasing through the year why why is it of that particular stage. Well i think we now have this incredible 2 of the highly effective treatments that are available and if a foldable affordable price but what needs to be in place to mount a response you need a National Plan you need a lavar tree infrastructure you need a testing infrastructure she need a supply chain you need a prick youre meant strategy you need to train the Health Care Workers so this is what it takes to fight an epidemic and of course we many of the same principles apply are applying with with with coverage and i think many countries have stepped up very well and there are some champion countries one of which you refer to egypt but also a row under in georgia and mongolia. As well as some high Income Countries including sort of australia from scotland england and others that have her recognised that this is a Public Health problem and have mounted a response and i think its not all about the drugs the drugs have been found with the catalyst to enable the response and what was also important was the rapid decline in the drug prices and it took 1520 years for us to see this in the h. I. V. Weld but in a very short space of time from a full time price so for almost a you know 100000. 00 for a treatment very quickly down to a 1000 and then 500. 00 for a 12 week treatment course im now less than 50. 00 that is quite phenomenal but all these other mechanisms need to be put in place and the testing and the diagnosis is extremely important having high quality low cost diagnostics and being able to make it simple and straightforward and i think the other. Thing is we dont need specialists to be the only wants treats he notes this is a very straightforward very well tolerated regimen and so as we learned with hiv were to scale up and get people access to treatment we need to train Frontline Health workers on the simple steps to administer the treatment so i think its when all these things come together as they have done so well in egypt which has screened 60000000. 00 more than 60000000 and treated more than 3000000 these are the examples the the models that other countries need to be following bob this comes against the backdrop of the somber moment where humanity is grappling with covert 19 and everybody asking the same question when are we going to find a vaccine but of the same time when you look at the time that took all those 3 scientists people are saying oh no we dont want that to happen now we dont want to wait for 30 years to find a vaccine for covert 90. Well you know its its quite interesting i thought that statement from the World Health Organization there was as elegant as i have an eloquent as ive ever heard anybody on television in terms of of Medicine Health care you know with coded the World Health Organization was unfortunately funded by the by the u. S. And i think what weve just heard outlined why its so critically important for the u. S. To stay in the game its in that funny because of the intricate balance and dance that it takes to be able to train Health Care Workers and get testing up get into you know places like brody that you know may have parts of the country that are still civil war i mean its a very tough thing to do is all of this infrastructure in training the takes that initial work really puts into play now what is interesting is you know you see with the president just last night he was taking rendez of air which was developed for hepatitis c. And so hes the beneficiary of all this work and you see the tremendous speed you know that there are now Something Like 140 vaccine candidates there are probably 7 or so that are now in stage 3 trials producing lots and lots of in a body present had a new therapy for a coming over general on multiple antibodies and just to make it clear you know when you give somebody a vaccine lets say that this is the vaccine then you develop antibodies to whatever its presenting in this case is the spike virus well what this for general treatment does is it gives you premade antibodies is if you have the vaccine or if youve taken some serapis already been affected to give that to somebody it may may may be why the president so long now is ok so has a troublesome course before we really find out what. Does that the great 8 i think here youre saying how action in terms of all of the molecular biology is really the you know the infant of this work that was done by these tremendous researchers before we consume this. Have a look at where do we stand when it comes to the hunt for coven 1000 vaccine vaccines can take years to be approved but its hoped some being developed for coping 1000 could be available next year the vast majority are still in the preclinical stage being tested on animals not people about 40 are in phase one where they are given to any one full of people or face to where they are tested on hundreds face 3 is reported to have 11 promising prospects where thousands of trial patients receive the drug to confirm its safety and check for any side effects vaccines developed by the Pharmaceutical Company astra zeneca in conjunction with Oxford University and another by u. S. Biotech firm would earn a lot of stage 3 chinas given limited approval for use of a vaccine developed by sign of back after initial tests on soldiers and president Vladimir Putin gave the go ahead for a russian vaccine in august before phase 3 testing had. Begun Stephen Michael horton is also part of a team working to produce vaccine for covert 19 and this is a white house or his said that basically its about time to focus on viable o. G. Immunology and if factious Disease Research thats the only way out for us to be able to crack the code of code in 1000. Sure i mean i think its worth saying that a vaccine against our side hepatitis c. A National Park difference concepts or a vaccine against Something Like. They mention a virus is quite different in the way that theyre very much more variable. As a sort of chance erring in terms of both because what were seeing with with with sars is the race to get that done very quickly is a necessity however i think we need to be absolutely certain the outcomes are a randomized controlled space treaty that the vaccines that do effects of the use and the Wider Population are safe and our education and our what exactly want to do and whether thats protecting pirates. Grooms one understands so i think we are in an unprecedented rush and not rushing sounds of more has less the russian sense of tremendous achievement to see some of the outcomes of. Philip i mean this cove in 98 has been a wake up call in a way or another for us and for the community if for for people like yourself and this is raising a concern among people basically saying that its about time for organizations like the World Health Organization to redirect efforts into investing more into until viral drugs because the next pandemic could be more devastating like over 1000. Thank you i mean i just like to pick up on one other point i mean clearly the science has been absolutely fundamental to the Vaccine Development and its just you know donna a real turnaround back to vittie which is important but we mustnt forget about access that you know ultimately we need to have a system in place that is going to allow where the vaccine is where the greatest need is the vaccine is made available so i think the initiative the target show has established kovacs a a consortium to ensure that theres full cost of where the need is going to be and how to enable vaccines for the low and middle Income Countries the high Income Countries have established Bilateral Agreements and have secured a potential vaccine supply chain but if we have going to address this epidemic it has to be done with as part of a Global Consortium and so the that is for sure is ensuring is that in addition to the high Income Countries having access to vaccines we ensure all the low and middle Income Countries do so also and the same applies to the drugs and the same plies to the diagnostics and so good all costing good procurement good supply chain ok and a Multilateral Partnership bob the scientists you spoke about earlier those devoting their lives for the sake of humanity those who help us sequence. Disease in a matter of weeks mican testing a vailable as soon as possible. If we follow into the footsteps of those people do you think that alternatives like mina clonal antibodies could be the only best hope for us in the coming weeks or months to crack the code of code 19 you know its a good its a great question we sort of wont know until we find out what happens with the president you know hes not in the period of the disease this most critical yet so we really dont know as was given in vain if this should work it could really you know as you point out crack the code but i would say is that you know the vaccine is overrated and the only has to be 50 percent effective is the head and c. D. C. Said a couple weeks ago you know right now the mass good masks are. Up to 7 percent effective you have a total and 95. 00 approval mask hundreds of millions be made many more available and you practice distancing you can really beat this you know we saw the pandemonium of the white house with you know failed testing using testing instead of just insane masks we saw what not to do but you know theres great hope right now it with with just in seeing not being closed indoor spaces that this could work out but you make a very good point that you know a general Monoclonal Antibody should this work it could be a huge breakthrough because we havent had anything early in the disease to be able to stop this rural into this terrible cytokine storm thats killed so many people. Stephen youre a scientist but im afraid im going to take you to a flu fickle angle here whats the purpose of scientists science if science is not equally benefiting humanity the reason why i ask you this question is people are saying basically people mostly affected by these diseases these days are in poor countries in Subsaharan Africa in asia and ultimately where you see is ours is that sophisticated labs. Station in the west where they have all the luxury of advanced technology and Financial Investments ultimately those suffering most are getting nothing. Well im not sure i completely agree with i think that theres a growing recognition in any youre. Welcome. And. Actively diseases that are neglected to have unmet need countries do have rights or infrastructure and better resourced and i think its important they dont just focus on diseases that affect them and this a huge minutes awards that. Funding. Searches the gates. Here in the. U. K. Are theres a huge increase in quotas on neglected diseases. And diseases Infectious Disease and secure and of course the recent outbreaks of things like virus. And now of course youre in our Series Making us recognize that that is of tremendous importance in these these these issues obviously affects lower middle Income Countries more of this in other countries but actually it should be for a benefit i think. And there should be an initial. Perhaps one or 2 who makes it even think about the value of the money and then it was cost we could invest a bit more in those sorts of events that measures absolutely lets share and structure lets make sure benefits all of mankind we. Are out there was a lot of help given the right places the right side so i think we need to. Philippa do you think its about time to rethink the priorities lets start tackling the most aggressive diseases that we have and leave those less aggressive later because we dont have enough resources to tackle with all those problems at the same time. Well i think also picking up on the theme of the last question about sherry skills and capacity i mean i think certainly we do not have faith in any way the monopoly on skills and expertise in the in the high income settings and i think you know what weve seen with the coverage response is really some very strong exemplary responses in low income settings building on their experience of pandemic preparedness from about another outbreaks and really with the establishment of good diagnostic infrastructure and for such a city as well so i think thats been very empowering and inspiring to see to see that leadership thank you but i think you know i think one other important point its really the power of partnerships to be a temperature to see or cover and we need Civil Society we need government leadership we need the sat is we need the commissions and its the coordination the deft coordination of that in whatever best way it should be deploying to that is going to be so water and thank you philippa for sort of a running out of time for its abrupt bob arnot Stephen Griffin i really appreciate your contribution to the program thank you and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website dot com for further discussion go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com for was last a. J. Inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter out hand there is a chain side story for me. And the whole team here i phone app. The latest news as it breaks the hifi battle to confirm any call it barrick now to the republican controlled senate. With details covering governments across europe wrestling with a worsening Health Emergency but only going economic crisis and fearless generalism from around the world today student protest as i continue in the whole of their previous issues for structural for little change. 40 years ago on october the 6th when muslims were observing ramadan and jews were celebrating young people egypt and syria launched a surprise war against israel. Out of his room permitted so to get into this situation theres us now in the 1st of a 3 part series aljazeera explores what really happened during the 1st week of the war in october on aljazeera. 100 hours g. M. T. On aljazeera im come all sons of maria and these are the headlines white house adviser Stephen Miller has become the latest trumpet ministration official to test positive for covert 19 seen as the architect of Donald Trumps anti immigration policies about a dozen white house officials have not tested positive including the president himself here is my encounter in washington with more stephen has been with President Trump since he took office one