Romania’s Health Minister Victor Costache resigned on Thursday after proposing that Bucharest’s 2 million residents should individually be tested for COVID-19.
Critics said the idea was logistically difficult, inefficient and far too expensive for the underfunded healthcare system.
The initiative was also the last straw, and he was forced to go. Since becoming minister in Orban’s government in November, Costache has been noted for his absence.
So it makes sense that his deputy, Nelu Tataru, who has been the public face of the ministry, steps into the ministry’s top job to tackle Romania’s biggest health crisis of the last 30 years, commentators said.
” He was, and he will be on the front line of the battle against coronavirus,” said Prime Minister Ludovic Orban.
Shortly after he was sworn in by President Klaus Iohannis, Tataru said his priorities were „logistics, equipment, ventilators, and human resources,” to tackle the pandemic. He said authorities would launch a pilot program on 10,000 Bucharest residents to test for COVID-19.
The former manager takes on the new role as Romania battles to keep the virus from spreading. Iohannis decreed a state of emergency on March 16 in response to the growing crisis.
More than 900 cases have been reported and deaths rose to 14 on Thursday. The pandemic is expected to peak in April.
A long-standing member of the ruling Liberal Party, Tataru, 47, was a surgeon at a hospital in the northeast town of Husi, and later became hospital manager.
He is currently the leader of the National Liberal Party for Vaslui county, a poor region where the Social Democrats, Romania’s biggest party, traditionally do well.
He was named state secretary at the health ministry in December 2019 and became the ministry’s main and most visible communicator Costache “stayed in the shadow for the almost 5 months he was minister,” Hotnews reported.
Tataru graduated from the respected Medicine and Pharmacy University in Iasi and then worked at the hospitals in Vaslui and Husi, in one of Romania’s poorest regions.
He was general director of the hospital in Husi from 2007-2009 and became its manager from 2009-2010.
Tataru ran the local Liberal Party offices in Husi and then in Vasului country from 2011 until now. He was a senator from 2012 to 2016.
President Iohannis is expected to formally appoint him later Thursday.
