January 11, 2021 UPDATE

Phase two of vaccination campaign to kick off in Romania later this week./ Romanian pupils resume online learning after the winter break.

Newsroom, 11.01.2021, 20:00

Vaccination. A 4th
batch of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reached Romania on Monday morning. The
150,000 doses that arrived at the airports in Bucharest, Cluj Napoca and Timișoara are
taken to the Cantacuzino Institute in Bucharest and to vaccination centres around
the country. The coordinator of the national vaccination programme dr. Valeriu
Gheorghiţă said on Monday that the first batch of the Moderna vaccine is
expected to arrive in Romania on Wednesday, namely some 14,000 doses. He said
up to 450,000 doses will be arriving in the first quarter. Since the start of
the national vaccination programme on 27th December, over 125,000
people have received the vaccine in Romania. Mild and common side effects have
been reported in 350 cases. Phase two of the programme, which targets the
elderly and chronic patients, is set to begin on January 15. Meanwhile, the
total number of coronavirus cases in Romania surpassed 673,000, with the total
death toll over 16,700. Over 1,000 patients are currently in intensive care,
and nearly 600,000 patients have recovered so far.

Pandemic. A team
of World Health Organisation experts in charge with investigating the origin of
the novel coronavirus will begin their mission on Thursday, the Chinese health
ministry announced on Monday, according to France Presse and Reuters. This has
been a sensitive issue to Beijing, which seeks to control the origin story of
the pandemic that killed more than 1.9 million people worldwide, France Presse reports.
Initially scheduled for last week, the mission was cancelled at the last
moment. The green light comes exactly one year after the first coronavirus
death was reported in China’s Wuhan. Nearly 91 million people have so far
caught the virus, and more than two thirds of them have recovered.

Schools. Romanian
pupuils on Monday resumed online classes after the winter holiday. Three weeks
of online classes will be followed by a one-week break before the second half
of the academic year. The education ministry is to decide by the end of the
month whether the second school semester, beginning on February 8, will see
children back into schools. The National Student Council has requested
decentralised decisions in this respect, so that schools may be reopened in
areas with infection rates below 3 cases per one thousand people. The education
minister Sorin Câmpeanu said in a recent meeting with relevant trade unions and
teacher, student and parent associations that it all depended on the latest
COVID-19 developments, and that schools and kindergartens would most likely reopen
in stages depending on the local infection rate. Sorin Cîmpeanu also said that
students’ and teachers’ health is important, but that making sure pupils catch
up with the learning missed, especially with national exams coming up, must
also be considered.

Deficit. Romania’s
trade balance deficit deepened by some 910 million euros in the first 11 months
of 2020 compared to the previous year, to reach 16.4 billion euros, according
to data released on Monday by the National Statistics Institute. Between
January 1 and November 30, 2020, exports totalled 57 billion euros and imports
73.5 billion. Compared to the corresponding period of 2019, exports dropped by
11%, and imports by nearly 8%.

Tennis. The
Romanian tennis player Mihaela Buzărnescu on Monday won 6-4, 6-3 against
Spain’s Lara Arruabarrena, in the Australian Open qualifying tournament held in
Dubai. Three other Romanian players, Jaqueline Cristian, Laura Paar and Monica Niculescu, lost their
qualifying matches, also on Monday. Five Romanian players are
on the main draw at the Australian Open: world no 2 Simona Halep, Patricia Ţig
(56 WTA), Sorana Cîrstea (71 WTA), Irina Begu (78 WTA) and Ana Bogdan (92 WTA).
In the men’s singles, Marius Copil lost on Monday in three sets to Australia’s
Dane Sweeny in the qualifying round in Doha, Qatar. The Australian Open is due
to take place between 8 and 21 February. (CM)