The President of Romania has appointed a new prime minister
The consultations of the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, with the parliamentary parties for the appointment of a new Prime Minister ended on Thursday, the National Liberal Party proposing the current Minister of Defense, Nicolae Ciucă, as Prime Minister-designate. After the announcement, President Klaus Iohannis said that the political crisis must end and the new government must start solving the problems that concern Romanians. „We have a pandemic crisis, we have a dramatic situation in Romanian hospitals, winter is knocking at the door, energy prices are rising and even if we now have solutions to these issues, we need a government with full powers to implement the solutions we have settled” said Klaus Iohannis. The new Prime Minister-designate Nicolae Ciucă said he intends to announce the new composition of the government as soon as possible, which will further be voted by the Romanian Parliament. „We will negotiate with all the responsible forces so that in as short a time as possible we will be able to form the government and also negotiate with all the responsible forces so that the proposed government can be approved by Parliament,” said Nicolae Ciucă.
The pandemic situation in Romania
Romanian authorities announced on Thursday 16,110 new cases of coronavirus, registered in the last 24 hours, after over 67,000 tests performed. 448 deaths have also been reported in the last 24 hours, and 1,815 patients are being admitted to Intensive Care Units. Most cases are in Bucharest, over 3,000, and the capital is followed by Ilfov, Iaşi and Prahova counties with over 700 cases. The 112 Emergency Service faces a very high number of calls from citizens reporting symptoms of COVID and asking for medical crews ecquipped for testing. The Special Telecommunications Service (STS), which manages the emergency number, has supplemented the number of operators.
Romania asks European Commission to accelerate the supply of the drug tocilizumab
Romania has asked the European Commission to accelerate supplying the hospitals with the drug tocilizumab, used to treat patients with severe forms of COVID-19. Also, the Romanian authorities requested teams of specialists to support, for certain periods, the medical staff from the first line. The call was made by the interim Minister of Health, Cseke Attila, in a phone conversation with the European Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides. She was informed about the epidemiological situation in Romania and about the fact that our country has not yet reached the peak of this pandemic wave, and the vaccination rate has increased recently, but insufficiently, according to the Romanian Ministry of Health.
Romania, one of the least safe European countries, due to the large number of COVID-19 cases
Spain, France, Italy and Poland are the safest European countries for travel during this period, based on official data on the number of COVID-19 cases, centralized by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Instead, along with the 3 Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Romania is among the least safe countries, due to the large number of infections./mbaciu
