July 4, 2020 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 04.07.2020, 19:18

COVID-19 Ro — The Romanian government is working on a bill which should allow the authorities to continue to isolate or quarantine the people infected with the new coronavirus, after the publishing of a Constitutional Court decision in the Official Gazette according to which patients can no longer be kept in hospital without their consent. The government is going to discuss the new law next week. For the moment, isolation and quarantine are no longer an obligation but a recommendation, and more and more hospitalized people have applied for being discharged. Still valid though is an article from the Criminal Code on thwarting the fight against diseases, and those who transmit the virus will have to assume the consequences of their acts, the authorities said. Doctors warn that infected people with little or no symptoms at all risk infecting other people if they do not observe isolation measures. The latest figures published by the Strategic Communication Group in Bucharest show 416 new confirmed cases of contamination in the past 24 hours, which takes the total number of cases to 28,500. Of the people infected, 20,861 have been discharged from hospital. 1,731 people have died from complications caused by COVID-19. The number of Romanian citizens from abroad who have died of COVID-19 has reached 122.

COVID-19 world — The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world has exceeded 11.2 million, with the number of deaths nearing 530 thousand. As many as 6.4 million people have recovered from coronavius infection, shows the online platform Worldometers.info. The US continues to report an increased number of COVID-19 contaminations reaching a total number of 2.9 million cases. More than 132 thousand Americans have died from corona infection. At the same time, the EC on Friday gave its conditional approval for the use of antiviral Remdesivir in severe COVID-19 patients following an accelerated review process, making it the region’s first authorized therapy to treat the virus, AFP reports. “We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to secure efficient treatments or vaccine against the coronavirus,” said Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, in a statement. In Latin America, Anvisa, the authority regulating the Brazilian medical system, approved, also on Friday, the start of clinical studies for a possible vaccine against the coronavirus developed by the Chinese company Sinovac. The announcement was made in the context in which Brazil has exceeded the threshold of 1.5 million cases of Covid-19 infection, being the second hardest hit country, after the US. More than 63,000 Brazilians have died from coronavirus infection.

Independence Day – The strategic partnership between Romania and the US is stronger than ever, said the Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu in a message conveyed on Saturday on the occasion of the US Independence Day. He added that he was looking forward to further consolidating the two countries’ excellent cooperation to the benefit of their citizens. Bucharest remains firmly committed to supporting a strong trans-Atlantic relation, and Romania will always be a strategic and stalwart ally of the US, the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis had previously said. Other Romanian high-ranking officials also conveyed messages on the occasion of the US Independence Day. In turn, the US Ambassador to Bucharest, Adrian Zuckerman, underlined that Washington remained committed to helping improve the rule of law in Romania as well as to ensuring the country’s sovereignty and security.

Theater — The International Theater Festival in Sibiu (in central Romania), held online for the first time due to the pandemic, started on Saturday the series of free rebroadcasting of the shows and events of this year’s edition, which unfolded between June 12 and 21. Rebroadcasting of the shows will take place over the period July-December, exclusively on the festival’s website (www.sibfest.ro/fits-online). The first shows rebroadcast on Saturday are ‘Magic tales’ and ‘The bull and the rabbit’ by Marian Ralea. Other shows that spectators can watch on Saturday are ‘After the battle’ by Pippo Delbono or the first part of the show ‘Brothers and Sisters’ directed by Lev Dodin.

EU — Budget restrictions for the EU member states will be applied again after the recession caused by the pandemic comes to an end, said the vice-president of the EC, Valdis Dombrovskis, in an interview to the Italian publication Corriere della Sera. The European Pact for stability and growth requires a public deficit of maximum 3% of the GDP and a public debt that should not go beyond 60% of the GDP. The Pact remains active, Dombrovskis added, explaining that the suspension clause was activated. The governments that report higher deficits during the crisis should take into account the sustainability of such policies, the EC official has warned.

Greece — The Romanian Foreign Ministry — MAE has urgently resumed diplomatic efforts to urge the Greek authorities to streamline traffic flow at the border-crossing point Kulata- Promachonas between Bulgaria and Greece. On Saturday the line of vehicles waiting to go through the border checkpoint exceeded 10 kms. MAE officials warn that the Greek competent authorities can change, without prior notice, the conditions for entering the Greek territory, depending on the number of new cases of COVID-19 infection reported. The situation at the aforementioned cross-border point was generated by the decision of the Greek authorities to test all the citizens of non-EU countries, in the context of the pandemic. (tr. L. Simion)