Romania will step up its Covid-19 vaccination campaign as 8 million doses are expected to arrive in the country over the next two months, prime minister Florin Cîţu said.

On March 31, Romania passed the threshold of 2 million people vaccinated with at least one dose. Since the start of the vaccination campaign, on December 27, 2,015,307 people received the vaccine: 942,322 the first dose and 1,072,985 both doses, the Vaccination Committee CNCAV said.

“We are stepping up the vaccination campaign: in April, we will receive more than 3.3 million vaccine doses and more than 5 million in May. We will increase the vaccination capacity to allow people who wish to get vaccinated faster access,” a message on the prime minister’s Facebook page reads. “We all want to go back to normal, and vaccination is the fastest way to get rid of the pandemic.”

Speaking at the end of the Government meeting on March 31, Cîţu highlighted the worrying situation of coronavirus patients reaching hospitals at advanced stages of the illness. “First of all, and this is the most worrying, people get admitted to the ICU in a more difficult and serious situation than last year,” he said, insisting that everyone should listen to the doctors’ advice. “We need to list to what the doctors are telling us; the pressure on the specialists in the health care system is very, very high.”

On March 31, there were 1,412 Covid-19 patients admitted to intensive care units of hospitals in the country, a record high since the start of the pandemic.

The PM said the authorities are working to increase the number of ICU beds to 1,600. “I have asked for 1,600; there will be 1,600. We are talking about a healthcare system that was built this way in the past 30 years; we cannot change it in two-three months, not even in a year. Of course, we are allocating additional resources; we have allocated them again today, and the health minister will explain where, but we cannot change things overnight,” he said.

He also said the restrictions currently in place are needed, and changing them was not currently an option.
“Not at this point. At this point, we want to see the results of the measures we introduced. I have presented the situation; we have more than 100 coronavirus-related deaths per day. The situation in ICUs is complicated; we have more than 1,400 people in ICUs, the highest number since the start of the pandemic. I’m looking again at the numbers, more than 6,000 daily cases.”

(Photo: Guvernul Romaniei Facebook Page)

simona@romania-insider.co