April 8, 2020 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 08.04.2020, 20:06

TOLL
The total number of people killed by the new coronavirus in Romania has reached
215, the Strategic Communication Group announced on Wednesday. The number of
the infected currently stands at 4761 after 344 new cases have been reported.
528 out of the people infected have been declared cured and left hospitals but
162 patients are in the ER units for treatment. 651 Romanians have been
infected with the new virus abroad while 37 Romanian nationals have lost their
lives abroad since the beginning of the crisis. The country’s president Klaus
Iohannis has again called on citizens to observe the measures imposed and stay
at home during the Easter holidays adding that he will be doing the same, spend
the holidays at home with wife and no guests. Health minister Nelu Tataru said
that Romania is yet to reach the peak of the pandemic, which is most likely to
happen late this month. Also on Wednesday, with a landslide majority, the
Senate in Romania passed a draft law providing for granting survivor’s benefits
and other compensations to family members of the medical personnel who lost
their lives in the fight against the virus.

RESIGNATION EU science chief Mauro Ferrari has resigned over the
response of the EU bloc to the coronavirus outbreak. Ferrari, who took over in
January for a four-year term, has invoked the institutional resistance and
bureaucratic infighting within the EU complex structures to his proposal for a
wide scale scientific programme to combat COvid-19. EU governments and
institutions have been accused of chaotic response to the pandemic, failing to
respond quickly and not working together, Reuters reports. On Wednesday, for
example, European finance ministers failed to
reach an agreement on a common relief package to counteract the effects of the
coronavirus pandemic. In another development, the EU prepared a 15.6 billion
euro plan aimed at assisting partner countries in fighting the pandemic. The
money will benefit African countries, countries included in the vicinity
policy, like the Western Balkans, Middle East and North Africa, countries in
Asia the Pacific area, Latin America and the Caribbean

EVENT The 15th edition of
Bookfest International Book Fair due to take place in Bucharest between the 27th
and the 31st of May has been cancelled. The decision comes after an
announcement by president Klaus Iohannis that the state of emergency will be
extended for another 30 days, until mid-May. Japan was supposed to be the guest
country of the fair this year. Bookfest is one of the many major cultural
events cancelled because of the coronavirus outbreak in Romania.

COVID
‘The Covid-19 crisis
has pushed us to rethink connectivity in all dimensions, on both sides of the
Atlantic. The free movement of people, goods and ideas – the nerves that kept
our world in motion – has started facing baffling setbacks. These times of
restraints and uncertainty may stem democracies from thriving and may bring
inevitable if temporary limitations upon our democratic societies. Our
democratic values, no matter how deeply rooted in our common thinking, will be
inevitably challenged by the temporary physical limits put in place in the face
of this invisible enemy. It is our mission to step up efforts nationally and at
EU level to reassure Europe’s citizens. We must act to protect the social
fabric of our built-in democratic interdependence, safeguard the freedom of
movement of essential goods and provide real prospects for resuming the freedom
of movement of people as soon as possible’, Romanian Minister Bogdan Aurescu wrote
in an article carried by the EU Observer. We recall that the number of people
infected with the new coronavirus the world over has exceeded 1.4 million and
82 thousand people have so far lost their lives. 300 thousand people have been
cured. Five countries have more than 100 thousand cases, the USA, Spain, Italy,
France and Germany. 1939 people have died in the past 24 hours on the US
territory, the highest daily toll registered since the beginning of the
outbreak. 11 Romanian doctors and four nurses are helping their colleagues in
Lombardy, northern Italy for a period of 14 days.

(translated by bill)