Romania has reported almost 4,000 new cases of Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, as cases begin to creep up.
A rise in fresh infections in the past three days comes almost a year after Romania reported its first case of coronavirus, shortly after it arrived in Europe from Wuhan in central China.
The Strategic Communication Group said 3,923 cases were posted in the last day, about 600 more than the previous day. About 37,000 tests were carried out giving a positivity rate of 10.65%.
Prime Minister Florin Citu said Thursday “now is not the time to relax.”
„What we’ve done so far can very easily be lost if we don’t respect restrictions,” he said, adding there were no plans to introduce new restrictions.
Romania’s vaccination rollout is going relatively well, with more than 855,000 people having received at least one dose.
But pandemic fatigue, a drop in cases this month and the reopening of many schools have seen figures climb again.
Thursday’s is the highest single-day figure since 13 January, about six week ago. In the past three days, cases have topped 3,000 in a month where single-day infections generally stayed below the 3,000 mark.
Bucharest recorded 523 cases on Thursday, far more than anywhere else and the highest daily rate in a week. Timis, a county in southwest Romania which is the ‘red zone’ meaning it has more than 3 cases per 1,000, recorded a high daily rate of 412 cases.
Some 985 patients with the virus were seriously ill and were receiving treatment on Thursday in intensive care units.
There were 81 deaths in the past 24 hours. Three people in their 40s and six patients in their 50s succumbed to the virus, and the rest were older than 60.
All but four of the fatalities were patients with underlying health conditions.
