From the BBC:
“Covid: Romania's health
system torn apart by pandemic”
(The purple and red patches on
the map, indicating high levels of the virus, adjusted daily by researchers at
the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, continue to spread.)
"School holidays start on
Monday," President Klaus Iohannis announced glumly. Initially for two
weeks, but no-one dares guess when children might return, because Romania is in
the grip of a wave of Covid-19 far more deadly than anything it experienced
until now. To make matters worse, Romania has had no effective government since
the start of the month. Romania's 2,000 intensive care beds are all full, and
patients are now having to wait outside. The first 50 critically ill patients
have been transferred to hospitals in Hungary and Poland. "Sometimes I
feel like the whole country has become a resuscitation department," said
Dorel Sandesc, head of intensive care at Timisoara hospital in western Romania.
"It is a national failure on all levels. We are witnessing a kind of
national blindness, caused by the lack of education, by the lack of
civilisation," Dr Sandesc, who's vice-chairman of the Romanian Society of
Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, told the Puterea a Cincea website.
Vaccination levels now stand at
little more than 29% of the whole population and 34% of the adult population,
the second lowest in the EU after Bulgaria. The public blames the politicians -
for poor leadership, inadequate healthcare, and above all for vanity and
corruption. This weekend, the latest "vaccination marathon" is being
held in the capital, Bucharest, with six centres open 24 hours a day, to
encourage the reluctant. In the first two hours on Friday more than 1,000
people got the jab. Back in June Romania's decision to relax restrictions was
hugely popular and loudly trumpeted by then Prime Minister Florin Citu. Medical
commentators felt it was rash and irresponsible. Romania's healthcare system,
stretched to capacity by years of both neglect and corruption, is coming apart
at the seams, despite the everyday heroics of medical staff. Now, on a
seven-day average, 15,000 people a day are testing positive in this population
of 19.4 million. At the vaccination centre in Rosiori de Vede, a small town
nearly two hours south-west of Bucharest, they've just moved the vaccination
centre from the sports stadium to a pensioner's club with just two rooms. "We
had to scale down because the gym was too big for the low number of people
getting vaccinated in our town," says Liliana Catrinoiu, director of the
centre.
"A large part of the
population preferred to believe all the alarmist and sensational news related
to vaccination." During the summer, Romania sold on unwanted vaccines to
Ireland, Denmark and Vietnam, because of low domestic interest. From Monday,
masks will be compulsory nationwide, inside and outside buildings, and the
unvaccinated will not be allowed out on the streets after 20:00. How strictly
this will be enforced is another matter. In Piata Unirii in Timisoara, a waiter
at an up-market bar overheard one customer telling another that he was not
vaccinated, just as he was putting their drinks down on the table. "Drink
up fast,", he remarked, looking around for any sign of the Gendarmerie.
"But then you must leave." At a wedding last weekend in the
north-eastern city of Botosani, the groom was refused entry to his own wedding
party, after testing positive, according to local media. There was no
information about the couple's whereabouts later that evening.
The Orthodox Church in Romania
has been fiercely criticised by medical professionals for pouring doubt on the
safety and efficacy of the vaccines, although a Church spokesman last week
publicly urged people to get vaccinated. "In the first wave of the
pandemic, Father Bartolomeu died," Father Atal, a monk wrote to me from
the Orthodox monastery at Dervent, on the shore of the River Danube in eastern
Romania. "Then the rest of us either went through Covid with mild
symptoms, or got vaccinated." There are currently three cases in the
monastery, one aged 78, another 35, another 30. All with moderate symptoms, all
in isolation in their rooms. "I go down to the river at least once a week.
It flows quietly. The river has seen other pandemics and knows that man wins in
the end, with all the sacrifices involved."
^ It’s sad to see a whole country
still suffering so badly when it is easy to fix things – getting vaccinated. ^
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