Romania receives over 50,000 boxes of Molnupiravir, an antiviral medicine used in the treatment of COVID
Romania will receive today more then 50,000 boxes of Molnupiravir, an antiviral medicine used to treat COVID. The pills will get to hospitals that treat COVID patients, but also to ambulatory centers of diagnosis – Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said. Molnuvpiravir is a medicine recommended to treat adults with mild forms of the disease, who, however, present a high risk to develop complications and to die. The producers have recently announced that the drug can be successfully used against Omicron variant, fact proven by six independent preclinical surveys. As far as the medicine produced by Pfizer is concerned, minister Alexandru Rafila mentioned that it is expected that the EU will sign a contract with the producer.
More than a million Pfizer vaccine doses against COVID-19 will arrive in Romania
More than one million Pfizer vaccine doses against COVID-19 will arrive in Romania today and tomorrow. The serum is meant for both eligible categories of people. According to authorities, 216,000 doses for children aged between 5 and 11 and over 871,000 doses for people aged over 12 will be arriving. As of January 27, when the rollout for young children began in Romania, almost 4,600 doses have been administered. Among the adults, the interest for vaccination remains low. A little over 11,000 people have gone to a vaccination center yesterday, among which only 2,000 for the first dose.
Schools all over the country are open for face-to-face teaching
Schools all over the country are open for face-to-face teaching. Online classes are only taking place in classes or kindergarten groups where three cases have been confirmed in seven days or in units where half of the students in a class have been infected. All districts are now in red scenario after almost 20,000 people have been confirmed COVID positive in the last 24 hours. One in three tested people is confirmed positive with the coronavirus. Yesterday, 3,800 children have been confirmed with the coronavirus, and almost 36,000 have been tested positive in the last week. None of the districts has reached to the 75% level of occupation of COVID hospital beds. The number of hospital admissions in this wave is far smaller than in autumn. Almost 8,900 people have been hospitalized, of which 861 at the intensive therapy. After record numbers of infections registered last week, officials warn that we haven’t reached the peak of the wave and in the following days a new threshold, of 40,000 infections per day, could be exceeded.
The rising trend will continue for approximately ten days, thinks Alexandru Rafila. The number of hospital patients with COVID is rising, with a difference of 400 – 500 people from one day to the other, and this evolution is expected to continue. Complications, including serios cases that get to intensive therapy, are mainly generated by the Delta variant, that still covers around 20% of the new cases. The health minister said that he estimates that in approximately two weeks the new variant Omicron, which is already dominant, will completely replace Delta in Romania, and that will temperate the flux of patients in the hospitals. At the present, there are still areas in the country where sanitary units are more than half full.
Alexandra Ioniță, RADOR
