In the month of May, one small county had some of the highest numbers of coronavirus cases in Romania.
With just over 2% of the country’s population, on May 20, Arad was the fourth highest area for infections in the country with 697 cases.
On the border with Hungary, some of the cases were Romanians traveling back from Italy, the epicenter of Europe’s coronavirus infections at the beginning of the pandemic.
But now, Arad hasn’t had a single new case in the past week, unlike the rest of Romania where numbers have been rising.
Head of the county’s Public Health Department, Horea Timis, puts the results down to “putting pressure on the medical sectors(and) lots of checks.”
Its last infections were on June 24, when two people tested positive for the virus, authorities said, bringing its total to 706.
„We’ve just finished a very aggressive check of the industrial zone, every factory. We are keeping the pressure to keep the bar high, so we don’t relax too much. The second place where we are putting pressure is the health sector. We’re scared,” he told Special Arad.
“Arad has done a lot of testing through pooling. A lot of counties don’t do this because the law isn’t very scared. I come with a mentality from the private sector, and it doesn’t bother me. I’m interested in results.”
Five other Romanian counties didn’t report a single new case on Wednesday: Bihor and Salaj in western Romania, Valcea in central Romania, and Tulcea and Vaslui in the far eastern part of the country.
Romania’s virus epicenter remains the northern county of Suceava with more than 4,000 cases followed by the capital, Bucharest with 3,193.
On Wednesday, Romania reported 326 new cases, bringing the total to 27,296.
