April 21, 2021 UPDATE

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 21.04.2021, 20:12

VACCINE Romania is very close to
reaching the targeted capacity of 100 thousand people vaccinated daily,
Romanian president Klaus Iohannis said on Wednesday at the inauguration of a
mobile vaccination centre near Bucharest. President Klaus Iohannis also said that
he was quite satisfied with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Romania. Mobile
vaccination centres are operational in Romania as of Wednesday. So far the
vaccination capacity is over 80,000 doses per day, and a total of over 2.7
million people have received at least one dose. In this context, the head of
the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination
Coordination Committee, Valeriu Gheorghiţă, announced that authorities are
considering the option of giving vaccines in non-COVID hospitals for patients
with chronic diseases. Meanwhile, on
Wednesday, 3,006 new COVID-19 infections were reported, and the total number of cases since the
start of the pandemic is now over 1 million. More than 26,600
COVID-related deaths have also been reported so far, 175 of them in the last 24
hours, and 1,436 patients are in intensive care.

MINISTER Romania’s new Health Minister,
Ioana Mihaila, was sworn in at the Cotroceni Palace on Wednesday. Attending the
ceremony, Romanian president Klaus Iohannis said that Mihaila is taking over a
very complicated ministry at a difficult time, during the ongoing pandemic and
called on the government to provide support to the new minister. Ioana Mihaila
has been designated by the USR-PLUS Alliance after the sacking of Vlad
Voiculescu. Mihaila, an endocrinologist who has served as a state secretary
with the Health Ministry since January, earlier said that she wanted to solve
the medical crisis through concrete measures aimed at supporting hospitals and
depoliticize the country’s healthcare system. The centre-to-right ruling coalition
in Bucharest on Tuesday night reached an agreement which puts an end to the
deadlock caused by the unexpected sacking of Minister Voiculescu. They amended
the ruling protocol, so that the Constitutional prerogative of the Prime
Minister to sack a minister can be exercised only after the preliminary
notification of the political group that nominated the outgoing minister. The
anti-Covid vaccination remains a key priority of the government and the
coalition, the signatories of the aforementioned amendment have said.

HANDBALL The national women’s handball side of Romania on Wednesday qualified
for this year’s edition of the World Championship after a 35-20 win against
North Macedonia in Skopje. On Saturday, the Romanians won the first match
33-22. This year’s edition of the World Women’s Handball Championship is due
over December 1st and 19th. Romania is the only side in the world to have participated
in all the 24 editions of the aforementioned competition where our handballers
obtained four medals: gold in 1962, silver in 1973 and 2005 and bronze in 2015.
Romania ended the previous edition of the Championship on the 12th position.

FOOTBALL Romania’s football team will
play in Group B of the Tokyo Olympics, alongside New Zealand, South Korea, and
Honduras, according to the draw that took place in Zurich on Wednesday. The
group matches are scheduled between July 22 and 28. The Olympics football
tournament in Tokyo ends on August 7.

CORRUPTION The Senate of Romania Wednesday greenlighted criminal proceedings
against the former health minister Florian Bodog, at the request of the
National Anti-Corruption Directorate. Anti-corruption prosecutors claim that
while a minister, the Social Democratic Florian Bodog took steps to ensure that
one of his personal advisers was paid for one year without showing up for work
or actually fulfilling his obligations as an employee. Meanwhile the Liberal PM
Florin Cîţu approved the resignation of Gelu Puiu (PNL) as a state secretary
with the Environment Ministry, after an independent publication, ʹRecorderʹ,
made public recordings pointing to a blackmailing campaign coordinated by Puiu
and aimed at replacing county forestry managers with members of the Liberal Party
that had no qualifications for the job.

(bill)