Bucharest City Hall wants to pay residents who volunteer to get tested for COVID-19

The Bucharest City Hall wants to pay the city's residents who will volunteer to get tested for COVID-19. The tests will be carried out in an extensive program aimed at determining the spreading of the virus in the Romanian capital city, Mediafax has reported.

The proposed sum to be paid to each tested person is RON 200 (EUR 41), according to a draft decision to be discussed by the Bucharest General Council. The municipality aims to test about 11,000 residents, and the budget for the program is RON 2.23 million (EUR 460,000).

It's not clear, however, if the Bucharest residents who get tested within this program will get the money for themselves or if the RON 200 covers the testing costs.

"Starting May 15, the state of emergency will end, and the state of alert will be declared. We propose that the measures and actions that will be adopted during the state of alert include testing asymptomatic population, which is an important vector of intra-community transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In this sense, the Bucharest Hospitals and Medical Services Administration has come up with a project proposal that aims to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus among Bucharest's population. The municipality proposes financial support of RON 200 per beneficiary for the PCR testing of asymptomatic persons, to detect the infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus," reads a report signed by Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea, quoted by Economica.net.

The project to test Bucharest's population for COVID-19 first came into public attention at the end of March. At that time, the former health minister Victor Costache said that all of Bucharest's residents would be tested, door to door. His statement was widely debated as Romania could process less than 2,000 tests per day at that time. Shortly after that, Costache resigned.

Then, the head of the Matei Bals Institute for Infectious Diseases in Bucharest, Dr. Adrian Steinu Cercel, said that about 10,000 Bucharesters would be tested as part of a scientific study. However, the Health Ministry said at that time that it didn't endorse such a study or pay for it.

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