December 29, 2021

A news roundup

Newsroom, 29.12.2021, 13:55

COVID Ro — The Romanian health minister, Alexandru Rafila, announced on Wednesday that the duration of quarantine and isolation for people suffering from Covid-19 will be reduced from 14 to 10 days, as in most European Union countries. In turn, Adriana Pistol, head of the National Center for the Monitoring and Control of Communicable Diseases, urged people to get vaccinated in the context of a future pandemic wave caused by the Omicron strain. 1,271 new cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections have been reported in 24 hours in Romania, out of over 42 thousand tests, and 35 deaths, two of which were from the previous day, the Strategic Communication Group announced on Wednesday. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in Romania, over 1.8 million cases of COVID-19 have been registered, and almost 60,000 people diagnosed with the novel coronavirus have died. The country has the second lowest vaccination rate among the 27 EU members, after Bulgaria. Less than 7.9 million Romanians have been fully vaccinated, that is a little over 40% of the eligible population. About two million of them have also had the booster dose.

Budget — Romania’s President, Klaus Iohannis, has promulgated the State Budget Law and the Social Welfare Law for 2022. The next year’s budget prepared by the governing coalition made up of the PSD-PNL-UDMR is based on a 4.6% economic growth rate, an average annual inflation rate of 6.5% and an average gross salary of 6,095 lei (the equivalent of about 1,200 Euros) per month. Also, the government debt ceiling, was set, according to the European Union methodology, at 49.8% of the Gross Domestic Product, being estimated at 260 billion Euros. Funds of over 96.3 billion lei are allocated for the payment of public system pensions, which means 7.32% of GDP. The document was challenged at the Constitutional Court by the opposition USR, but their notification was rejected by the Court judges. The magistrates explained in their motivation, issued, for the first time, on the same day with their decision, that none of the challenged issues represents a violation of the Constitution. USR accuses that the government has not allocated, through the state budget, the necessary funds for the local administrations led by the mayors of this party. The PNL leader, the former prime minister Florin Cîţu, also criticized the fact that the draft budget for 2022 does not provide for a 7% of the GDP allocation for investments, as agreed in the governing coalition, but for only 6.7 %.

Handball — Romanias national mens handball team will play, tonight, at home, in Cluj-Napoca (in the northwest), a new training match with the Turkish national team. The two teams also met on Monday, when the Romanians won 26-24. The friendly matches replace, in the schedule of the two teams, a new edition of the traditional Carpathian Trophy, which was to be played in Cluj too, but which was canceled, after many players contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 were found in the groups of the other two participants, Switzerland and Iran. After the training matches, the Romanian handballers will play, also in Cluj, between January 7-9, 2022, in the preliminary qualifying tournament for the World Championship, where they will play against the national teams of Israel, Cyprus and the Republic of Moldova. The coach of Romanias handballers is the famous Spanish Xavi Pasqual, who won the Champions League with Barcelona three times.

Covid world – The Omicron strain of the novel coronavirus is spreading rapidly in many countries, but the number of hospitalized patients remains low for the time being. The UK on Tuesday recorded nearly 130,000 new cases of COVID-19, which is a new record, and 18 Covid-related deaths. An absolute record since the beginning of the pandemic has also been registered in Portugal – 17,000 new infections in the last 24 hours, in a country with the highest vaccination rate in the world, after the United Arab Emirates. Of Portugal’s population 10 million, almost a quarter has received booster doses, and the restrictions imposed are getting tougher and tougher. Switzerland has reported 13,000 new cases today, and 40 people vaccinated with three doses are hospitalized. The solution put forward by the Swiss authorities is to simply avoid meetings with other people. In the Netherlands, too, the omicron variant is now dominant, but the infection rate remains on a downward trend for the time being due to a tough lockdown. Italy has recorded an absolute record of over 78,000 new cases of COVID-19 in one day, the highest since the onset of the pandemic. In Turkey, too, the number of new infections has risen to more than 30,000, the highest since mid-October. The Turkish authorities insist on the need for vaccination. On Wednesday, Poland reported 794 COVID- 19 related deaths, the highest daily number in the 4th pandemic wave. (LS)