Concerns have risen in Romania after hundreds of Covid-19 patients left their hospital beds and thousands are no longer quarantining following a court ruling that stripped the government of the authority to impose quarantine.
Health Minister Nelu Tataru said that 550 patients with coronavirus had discharged themselves from hospital in the first three days after the Constitutional Court ruling was published.
“We need to manage the pandemic,” he said. “If we do an assessment from yesterday to today, although we have 250 new cases (Monday), we have 550 fewer patients in hospitals” who discharged themselves.
There were no figures available for the number of patients who have discharged themselves since then.
The minority government forwarded a draft law to Parliament on Monday to enable it to enforce quarantine. It is unclear, however, whether it will muster the votes to get the law passed.
The Constitutional Court ruled on June 26 that it was unconstitutional for the health ministry to impose quarantine as it violated basic human rights.
After the court published its written motivation on July 3, patients began to leave hospitals and walked out of quarantine facilities or home confinement. Prime Minister Ludovic Orban asked the public to follow government guidelines, but thousands reportedly haven’t.
The last government figures on quarantine on July 3 showed 741 people were in institutionalized quarantine, and about 59,000 in self-isolation at home under medical supervision.
Patients have discharged themselves from hospitals in Bucharest, Suceava, Buzau, Sibiu and Bihor and elsewhere, according to media reports citing local health authorities.
More than 3,000 people who were undergoing a two-week period of self-isolation in the northern county of Suceava, Romania’s worst hit area with more than 4,000 cases of coronavirus, are no longer isolation since the ruling, authorities said.
Of those, 20 informed the public health department by email that they would wear masks and respect social distancing rules, public health spokesman Dinu Sadean told Digi24.
In the northern county of Botosani, there is no longer anyone in quarantine, Monica Adascalitei said. Before the court ruling, there were 19 people in institutionalized quarantine and 1,260 people in quarantine at home, arrivals from ‘high risk’ countries.
In Dolj county in southern Romania, there is no longer anyone self-isolating or in institutionalized quarantine, public health spokesman Stefan Popescu told Gazeta de Sud. “They made a statement that they were leaving at their own risk,” he said.
