Number of COVID-19 cases expected to drop

Authorities are hoping that in a few weeks time, the number of coronavirus infections will start dropping

Roxana Vasile, 22.09.2020, 14:00

Several elements made September a difficult month in terms of managing the COVID-19 epidemic in Romania. This is why the authorities are yet again talking about the importance of observing healthcare rules, which is the only way for the situation to improve in the coming weeks.

Health minister Nelu Tătaru: “This September has been a rather busy month, with the reopening of restaurants, theatre and cinema halls, people returning from their holidays, the crowded public transport, the start of the school year, the election campaign and the ballot on the 27th … For each of these activities, guidelines have been put together, in order to minimise the risks. Observing these rules means we stay on a plateau of around 1,500 new cases per day. If we manage to keep this level, we can imagine a downward trend in the second half of October. If we dont observe the rules, we may well see a rise in the number of cases from one day to the next. For the time being, we are staying in this scenario, we are in a second stage, the peak of the first pandemic wave.

Last week, for the first time since the pandemic started, Romania had more than 9,000 new cases in a week, with a record of 1,713 infections reported in 24 hours. The rate of positive results out of the total number of tests conducted was also on the rise, and the transmission rate is over 1. The number of deaths per day is relatively constant, and so is the number of patients in intensive care.

There are counties, such as Iași (north-east), with limited hospital capacity for COVID-19 patients. The manager of the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Iași, Carmen Dorobăţ, tells us why:

Carmen Dorobăţ: “There are patients who still test positive even after 2-3 weeks in hospital. Some of them wont go home because they do not feel safe, medically speaking, or because they are afraid they may infect their closest ones, or because they have nowhere to self-isolate.

According to official data, the number of Romanians that have had the disease since late February is close to 115,000. Of them, nearly 91,000 have recovered, and around 4,500 died. Elementary maths, confirmed by data on the worldometers.info website, tells us that there are roughly 20,000 COVID-19 patients in Romania at present. (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)