October 4, 2021 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news

România Internațional, 04.10.2021, 20:15

Covid-19Ro. 8,292 new cases of coronavirus infection were reported
in Romania in the last 24 hours, after some 32 thousand tests were run, the
Strategic Communication Group announced on Monday. Within the same timeframe,
133 related deaths were also reported. 14,153 Covid-19 patients are currently
hospitalized, of whom 406 are children. 1,468 patients, including 21 children,
are in intensive care. At national level, there are almost no free beds left
for Covid-19 patients in intensive care. The incidence over 14 days is higher
than 3 per one thousand inhabitants in 185 towns and cities and in 991
villages. In another move, the European Medicines Agency has approved the
administration of the third dose of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in people over 18
saying that protection after the first two doses might drop. Additional doses
of Moderna and Pfizer for people with a weak immunes system have also been
approved by the agency. The administration of the third dose started in Romania
last week.

Motion.
The
two-chamber parliament in Bucharest debates and votes, on Tuesday, the motion
of no confidence filed by the Social-Democratic opposition (PSD) against the
Government led by the liberal Florin Cîţu. Apart from PSD, the Save Romania
Union, former junior partner in the ruling coalition, and the Alliance for the
Union of Romanians (AUR) will also vote in favour. Together, the three parties
have 280 parliamentarians, which is more than the 234 votes needed for the
government to fall. With only 134 MPs, the National Liberal Party has announced
that it will hold individual negotiations to support the Cabinet, which the
Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarian is also part of.

Survey. More than 80% of Romanians believe that things in the
country are going in the wrong direction and only 12.5% ​​believe that the
direction is right, according to a
survey conducted by INSCOP Research in partnership with Verifield, commissioned
by the ‘Strategic Thinking Group’. The percentage of dissatisfied people is higher
compared to the previous months. 48.8% of the respondents believe that mainly
Romanian companies and citizens are involved in illegal logging in Romania, while
44.8% believe that foreign companies are to blame. As regards immigrants coming
to Romania, 64.2% believe that this could trigger serious problems in Romanian
society, while 30% think that such a measure could help cover the need for
labor force in the country. The president of the Strategic Thinking Group,
Remus Ştefureac, says that three major crises overlapping, the pandemic, the
economic-social crisis and the political one, has created a state of ‘accentuated pessimism and deterioration of
perception’ with regard to the direction the country is heading in. A great
part of the population will be pushed into making radical political choices,
which will not solve, but rather worsen the issues society is facing, Remus
Ştefureac also said.

Nobel
Prize. The American researchers
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were awarded on Monday the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine 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. (MI)