October 4, 2021
A news roundup
Newsroom, 04.10.2021, 13:55
Covid-19 — Only 8 beds were still free in ICUs in Romanian hospitals on Sunday, after the number of seriously-ill patients rose to 1,440. 21 children are also in ICUs. On Sunday, the authorities reported almost 8,700 new COVID cases, most in the capital and in the neighboring county of Ilfov. In 18 cities across the country, the incidence rate went beyond 7.5 per thousand inhabitants, and Bucharest is nearing a rate of 9 per thousand. On Sunday the authorities reported 150 deaths in 24 hours. Doctors and public health specialists warn that Romania will reach the peak of the 4th wave of the pandemic this month, when 20,000 new cases could be reported daily. Doctors are worried about the situation and say the health system is hardly coping, while the representatives of ambulance services across the country announce an alarming increase in requests. Meanwhile, a new tranche of over 300,000 doses of COVID vaccines from Pfizer BioNTech reaches Romania today. The authorities said on Sunday that more than 30,000 doses of Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines had been administered in 24 hours. Since the onset of the vaccination campaign, on December 27, 2020, over 5.4 million people in Romania have been fully vaccinated.
Protests — The Sanitas Trade Union Federation representatives are today protesting in front of the Government headquarters in Bucharest. They criticize the serious situation in the health system which leads to such accidents as the fire in a Constanţa hospital (southeast), to restrictions of employees rights and the failure to ensure decent working conditions. In a message posted on the Federation Facebook page on Friday, in the context of the fire occurred at the infectious diseases hospital in Constanţa, Sanitas wrote that the ICUs cannot be made on order or improvised. Sanitas also points out that the Romanian government does not have a coherent strategy for solving the issue of the health facilities’ outdated infrastructure. 7 patients died on Friday in the fire that broke out at the Covid ICU of the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Constanţa.
Academic year — Almost 550,000 students from public and private universities in Romania today start a new academic year. More than half of the faculties will operate in a hybrid system, over a third with the students physically attending the courses, and the rest holding online courses. The President of the Alliance of Student Organizations in Romania, Horia Oniţă, says that all university centers should be prepared to move at any time from one scenario to another, depending on the local pandemic situation.
Nobel Prize — The American researchers David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were awarded on Monday the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2021. According to the announcement made by Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Committee, the two received the Prize for “their discoveries of receptors of temperature and touch. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine opens the series of these prestigious awards, granted each year in early October. The Nobel Awards ceremony continues with the Prize in Physics on October 5, the Prize in Chemistry on October 6, the Prize in Literature on October 7, and the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8. The Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced on October 11.
Survey — More than 80% of Romanians believe that things in the country are going in a wrong direction and only 12.5% believe that the direction is right – shows a survey conducted by INSCOP Research in partnership with Verifield, upon order by the think tank ‘Strategic Thinking Group’. The percentage of discontented people is increasing as compared to the previous months. 48.8% of respondents believe that illegal logging in Romania is committed mainly by Romanian companies and Romanian citizens, while 44.8% believe that they are committed mainly by foreign companies. As regards immigrants’ coming to Romania, 64.2% believe that this could generate serious problems in Romanian society, while 30% think that such a measure could help cover the need for labor force in the economy. The president of Strategic Thinking Group, Remus Ştefureac, says that the overlap three major crises, the pandemic, the economic-social and the political crises, caused a state of accentuated pessimism and the deterioration of perception over the direction the country is heading to. A great part of the population will be pushed into making radical political options, which will not heal, but rather worsen the problems in society – Remus Ştefureac added. (LS)
