January 6, 2021
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Newsroom, 06.01.2021, 13:55
VACCINE The third batch of 15 thousand doses of
Covid-19 vaccine has arrived in Romania on the airports in Bucharest, Cluj
Napoca and Timisoara. The immunization campaign in Romania kicked off on
December 27th and over 41 medical workers have been immunized so
far. The campaign’s second stage is to commence at the end of next week and
will be addressing vulnerable people and the workers in the country’s key
sectors. Authorities estimate that the third stage of the campaign, which is
targeting the entire population is due to begin in April. Since the onset of
the pandemic, roughly 650 thousand people have been infected on Romania’s
territory and over 16 thousand died.
ALERTS Hydrologists have issued yellow and orange alerts for
flooding on several rivers in northern, central and southern Romania. Scores of
towns and villages in 11 counties across Romania have been affected by flooding
in the past days. Heavy rainfalls have caused damage and temporarily disrupted
traffic on several national and county roads. Rail traffic has also been
disrupted and special teams have intervened to pump water out of households and
unblock roads and railways in several regions. Rescue teams in southern
Carpathians have issued warnings for potential avalanche risks at altitudes
between 14 hundred and 20 hundred meters where some ski slopes have been closed
down.
HOLY DAY January 6th is a major date for the Orthodox and
Catholic believers in Romania, a country with an Orthodox majority, which today
celebrates Epiphany or the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Jordan
River. Priests are giving sermons in front of the churches with holy water,
which is subsequently distributed among the believers. Because this holiday
involves the participation of numerous people, in all the churches across
Romania, measures have been taken to contain the spread of the novel
coronavirus. Winter holidays in Romania are due to end tomorrow with a
festivity celebrating the nativity of St. John the Baptist.
STATISTICS The number
of tourists looking for accommodation in Romania’s tourist infrastructure
diminished by half in the first eleven months of the year as compared to the
same period last year, shows data published by the National Institute for Statistics.
93% of the tourists applying for these services were from Romania and only
slightly above 7% from abroad. Most of the foreign tourists who chose to visit
Romania in 2020 came from Germany, Italy, Israel, France and Britain. The
number of Romanians who went abroad in the same period dropped by 60% as
compared to the same period of 2019.
(bill)
