down the endor plants will go to clinic to barcelona as a symbolic thank you to health care workers everywhere. but where the plants really listening they're watching did up in theirs i'm sorry martin of a back to the top next hour with more thanks for. coming battering the corona pandemic. where does research stand. what are scientists learning. background information and nurse. our corona up to. covert 19 special next on d w. d yes it is all its way to bring you more conservation.

how do we make cities screener how can we protect habitats we can make a difference the ideas mental series again global $3000.00 g.w. and all mine. every visit is an emotional highlight. the pandemic is especially cruel for the elderly the mortality rate is much higher than among younger people. and many suffer from loneliness. locals are able to live a lot it's a long time since i've seen him. the situation is especially grim a nursing. homes with

a pandemic highlights deep flaws in the health care system and too often it's the elderly paying the price. welcome to our special here on t.w. news i want to jones and good to have you with us sending a parent into a nursing home is painful at the best of times but the pandemic has added an extra level of agony in spain some 20000 care home residents died of covert 19 their relatives want to know could their deaths have been prevented. parra made a point of meeting us in front of the nursing home where her father in law died of the coronavirus in her view he lost his life because the management underestimated the danger posed by the infection and made mistakes with fatal consequences. the director here told employees not to wear masks to avoid alarming the nursing home residents. when her 86 year old father in law then started coughing and

developed a fever the family asked to have him transferred to a hospital to no avail. we were told that everything was fine he wasn't terribly ill and that's why he wasn't being transferred to a hospital. a few days later the elderly man died. his case is similar to those seen in dozens of nursing homes across the country. in spain the provinces are responsible for health care in madrid it's the regional government led by center right politician isabella uso seen here during a moment of silence for victims of cope with 19 recent documents have now sparked controversy they reveal that in march the regional government instructed hospitals not to accept any patients from nursing homes. nearly 20000 people in spain's nursing homes have died of covert 19 many of these cases will likely end up in the

courts hundreds of family members have already sued regional governments and nursing home management. people what this is about is the decision that older individuals will not receive medical treatment knowing that they will die as a result this has enormous legal implications like that in my uterus and then feel . parra has also filed a suit she finds it shocking that politicians were able to make life and death decisions for other people. i want justice by and that those responsible pay for this. our elderly deserved being treated with dignity. no the many fatalities in nursing homes have become a national trauma for spain. for more i'm joined by. assistant professorial research fellow at the care policy and evaluation center department of

health policy at the london school of economics and political science very good to have you with us i understand that you conducted a study on what tell a t. associated with copd 19 outbreaks in care homes what can you tell about it how high is the number. so we found that almost in many countries about how their. people who died as a result of coping it has happened in care homes so although initially or a lot of the focus was on hospitals for the hospitals and counting how many people went dana hospitals we found that there were squeezed out the best way to being ignored not come teet and that was partly because there was in my testing happened in care homes what we have free ice to use that as many as 3 to 6 percent of get home residents have in some counties and that these of course a very high number indeed and given that we knew from the start that coby 1000 is

especially dangerous for the elderly and those with an underlying condition even for those who are in care homes why are they better protected who is failing them. the initial response to this thread in much focused on ensuring there was enough hospital capacity so that there was not a lot of emphasis on making sure that there was space in hospitals so one of the people went sent very quickly from hospitals back to care homes sometimes without their sting in some countries and there was and really are locked off thinking and perhaps this is because we don't have much data in many counties about what leads in care homes or that their characteristics and if you don't have data it make meaning that if you are having the logical models tool to try and plan for that and then make you may not have the numbers for the population will be in care homes and they need to be completely left out of the planning right so mistakes were made and people had to die not the report we just saw focused on spain but is it the same

situation in other countries or are there significant differences in the response to 19. we have a very different response in many asian count periods where there have been very few deaths of get on rested and in hong kong 5 they haven't had this infection. they have managed to walk on through all the small outbreaks that they had and get it was that a great place for singapore so we found those countries they seem to have been able . to make sure that these are going to happen but these are also countries that have done generally very well but containing the community we have seen that in some european country is an enormous american in the u.s. and canada it's really quite that these esther situation right and sadly is. 19 is still here what it can and what must be done to improve the situation in care homes

as fast as possible. and 1st of all we need to make sure that we are very quick at responding to or not or outbreaks making sure that the if that is our look at breaking at a care home or the residence and staff tested regularly while that is a local outbreak 2nd of all we need to make sure that we reinforce and we support infection prevention contorting care homes we haven't had the luggage to the show on these encounters that have an expedient something like status. that's probably why there was so much better prepared but here we now have a chance we have learned a lot from this 1st and then there's waves that demi can we have a chance to be matched at the people and so kind of like go also say that we have to be much more realistic about whether to care homes can implement. so quite often they have tried to go right to apply all these protocols isolating residents that

have but then she'll be there with confirmed but they didn't have the means to do it testing and acting faster certainly is the right step to go. ahead there are from the london school of economics and political science thank you so much for your time. and it's time to answer your questions about covert 90 in the over to our science correspondent derrick williams. a vaccine for common cold coronaviruses has never been developed why are scientists cautiously optimistic that a vaccine for covert 19 will be found. it's true that we've never developed vaccines against the various corona viruses that cause cold like symptoms but there's but there's a big difference between them and sars cove 2 and that's that it doesn't just make you miserable for a day or 2 it can kill you in other words we've never really had this kind of motivation both medical and economic to develop

a vaccine for common colds developing a vaccine is a long wearisome and very very expensive process but but so many researchers and companies are throwing so much time and so many resources into the covert 19 problem that i for one i'm pretty confident they'll come up with was some kind of vaccine quickly that will that will prove effective to some extent at least in the short term the big question i think is going to be how long the effectiveness lasts . can you be infected with sars carved to through sweat. there's no evidence that sars cove 2 can be spread through perspiration however places where you might come into contact with someone else's sweat like like gyms can be risky for other reasons i mean if someone is doing something strenuous

enough to cause them to sweat then it's likely that they're breathing hard as well and that of course could pose a danger. interestingly though in this vein there's also research going on into whether canines can be trained to sniff out differences in the sweat of someone who's infected dogs are already being used in some settings to detect diseases like like early stage parkinson's and breast cancer and maybe they can be enlisted in the fight against covert 19. as well. are face shields a good protective option since they can be disinfected throughout the day. just like with masks there's been a lot of debate on the pros and cons of protecting yourself with a plastic face shield like those often worn by by health care workers some experts believe that when it comes to protection face shields might actually be

a better option than masks because even though they're open below the chin they also cover your eyes and they make it pretty much impossible for you to touch your face add to that that they're more comfortable to wear and as you noted they're also much easier to disinfect and they seem to have some some some pretty clear advantages so although the question needs further study at this point of wearing a face shield seems like an option that can help you to protect yourself and others . and eric williams will be back tomorrow so keep your questions coming before we go what's to do when you need to fly home and all the flights are canceled for one arjan time the answer was simple sail home one man well about estero reached his hometown of their plath out on wednesday nearly 3 months after leaving portugal to be with his elderly

parents high winds and strong waves off the coast of brazil almost cost him his life and there's no happy reunion just yet sterile now has 2 weeks of quarantine. now that's all the time we have for today for me and the team and glenn thanks for watching and take a. digital surveillance does it even when. journalists critics are under threat. as troops censorship or a lot of books this is china during the coronavirus condemning. people hope to return to normal. today but is that even possible. close up. next on d w. beethoven

is for me. is for. beethoven is for him beethoven. beethoven is for. beethoven is for everyone. beethoven 2020. the 50th anniversary here on d w. innovation. what can you conquer the major issues of our society. the seizing of the misspelling. bianco could close in its modern day heroes an. inspirational people who take on

the challenges of the world who with their unique ideas and. the postman would face off from nerium minds to look at those 2 problems and make them one clinician the new. season of sounders family. this week called double. china is still dealing with the effects of corona virus. the pandemic has changed everyone's lives. there's now a new normal. it includes frequent digital tests for the virus. first to scan this barcode and what does it get that automatically opens a health up. and when i take a look at the screen.