Vaccination and Prevention

Romania is expected to kick off a vaccination campaign for its entire population upon March 15th

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Ştefan Stoica, 01.03.2021, 13:50

Romania
ranks 7th in a world ranking of anti-Covid vaccination with both doses administered
reads the Facebook page of the National Immunization platform on February 26th,
two months into the campaign. This is an honourable place for the skeptics
ready to spot out the Romanians’ failures in terms of organisation. Still in
its second stage, which includes the elderly, those with chronic conditions and
the employees of the key institutions, the campaign is expected to enter its
third stage, which involves the entire population.

People
in this category can enlist for immunization on an online platform after March
15th and their vaccination can begin most likely in April, military
physician Valeriu Gheorghita, coordinator of the national immunization campaign,
announced on Sunday. The activation of this list hinged on rendering all the
750 centeres in Romania involved with the immunization campaign, operational.

On Monday Romania is to return to the
minimum of 30 thousand daily vaccinations and according to dr. Gheorghita,
there are days in which the number of those vaccinated will exceed 40 thousand.
Gheorghita went on to say that the percentage of 50% vaccinated population is
to be reached in June and July. In September, Romania could hit the threshold
of 60-70% collective immunization accounting for 10 million people.

However, vaccination does not exclude
prevention and caution, as Romania is in its third pandemic wave, according to dr.
Virgil Mustata from the Victor Babes hospital of infectious diseases in
Timisoara, western Romania. He insists on three protection measures, mask
wearing, disinfection and keeping social distancing.

Virgil Mustata: We have seen in the past two weeks a rising
number of infections and our hospital is facing an enormous pressure being half
occupied. Support hospitals are also reporting a big number of patients. The
only method to prevent this third wave is to not put more pressure on the
healthcare system and prevention is the right measure in this respect. And now
I would like to remind these three rules that we need to observe until we
notice a significant drop in the number of infections and are keeping the
pandemic under control: mask wearing, hand hygiene and disinfection as well as
social distancing. These three are very important.

Physician Virgil Musta is
recommending the people in the risk categories to get immunized a.s.a.p because
most of those admitted to hospitals with Covid infections are old people who
have other conditions.

(bill)