EU digital COVID certificate: Almost 2 mln documents issued in Romania, health official says

More than 1.91 million EU digital COVID certificates were issued in Romania by August 17, Secretary of State for Health Andrei Baciu said on Tuesday, Agerpres reported. Most of the certificates (95.87%) show that the holder was vaccinated against COVID-19.

Romania started issuing the EU digital COVID certificate on July 1. Romanian citizens can download the document from the Government-run platform certificat-covid.gov.ro.

According to the official report, more than 5.14 million people received a COVID-19 vaccine in Romania by August 17, and most of them (about 5.01 million) were fully vaccinated. In total, more than 9.6 million vaccine doses were administered in the country.

However, the Romanians’ interest in getting the vaccine has been decreasing in the past months. According to VaccinationEU data, with an average of 0.06 doses of vaccine administered per 100 inhabitants in the last seven days, Romania was last in the EU on August 16.

Valeriu Gheorghita, the coordinator of the national vaccination campaign, presented on Tuesday data showing that vaccines prevent most infections and reduce the severity of the disease. According to News.ro, he said that fully vaccinated people are 10 times less likely to get infected and 12 times less likely to be hospitalized after testing positive. Moreover, vaccination also reduces the risk of death (by 14 times for fully vaccinated people).

The analysis presented by Gheorghita was based on data obtained between February 1 and May 31, 2021, during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Photo source:Valerio Rosati/Dreamstime.com)