Romania to resume daily COVID-19 reporting as cases rise

Romanian officials will resume the daily reports on COVID-19 cases starting Tuesday, amid a strong rise in the number of infections, the Health Ministry announced, according to G4media.ro.

Romania switched to weekly COVID reports about a month ago, as the number of infections was low. Since then, the reports have been issued only on Mondays.

However, the situation kept changing in the past few weeks, with Romania reporting increasingly more infections. In the June 13-19 week, the Health Ministry reported 2,609 new cases of COVID-19, while the following week, the number increased to 3,974. Then, the number almost doubled, with authorities reporting 7,726 new cases for the June 27-July 3 week. On Monday, July 11, health minister Alexandru Rafila said nearly 15,000 cases of COVID have been reported in the past week.

In related news, minister Rafila said most of the new cases registered in the last weeks had been mild cases. According to him, the rising trend is estimated to continue in the upcoming 4-5 weeks.

"I think the peak will be around 10-12,000 cases recorded daily. But, I repeat, the number of cases is not important, the evolution of these cases is important, whether or not it involves hospitalization, if there will be mild forms of the disease in which symptomatic treatment and isolation for a few days may be sufficient, then we will have no problem," Rafila said in show aired by Prima TV, News.ro reported.

According to the minister, the existing vaccines against COVID-19 are those authorized in 2020, and the data show that "both vaccinated and unvaccinated people can get equally infected." The difference, he says, is that people with serious illnesses benefit, through vaccination, from "a certain degree of immunity", which often prevents complications of the disease.