October 2, 2020 UPDATE

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 02.10.2020, 20:04

COVID-19 2,343 new Covid-19 infections and 53 fatalities
have been reported in Romania in the past 24 hours. 571 patients are in
intensive care units. 132 thousand infections have been confirmed in Romania
since the beginning of the pandemic and a death toll of 4,915. The high number
of infections has prompted the country’s Prime Minister Ludovic Orban to call
for daily checking on the observance of safety regulations. Orban has recalled
that in the places where the infection rate exceeds 1.5 cases per thousand in the past 14 days, any activity in bars,
restaurants and other indoor institutions will cease until the situation
improves. 338 education units in Romania are offering online courses as over
770 children have been confirmed infected in the past week, according to data
announced by the country’s Health Minister Nelu Tataru.

MEETING Romania’s
president Klaus Iohannis on Thursday and Friday attended the European Council
proceedings in Brussels. High on the agenda were talks over the Single Market,
the industrial policy and the latest developments in the digital field as well
as foreign policy issues such as the situation in Eastern Mediterranean, the
relations with China and Belarus, the attempted murder on Alexei Navalny and
the latest developments in Nagorno-Karabakh. The EU leaders briefly tackled the
EU-UK talks. Also high on the agenda was the need for an effective coordination
at European level in terms of safety measures against the present pandemic, the
access to medicine and efforts to come up with a vaccine a.s.a.p, the
preservation of the interior market and the national economies. According to
Iohannis, a consolidated interior market is aimed at increasing the EU’s
strategic autonomy and reducing its dependence on third parties. He highlighted
the need for a through development of the physical and digital infrastructure,
essential aspects for raising the level of convergence and cohesion among the member
countries. Iohannis also highlighted the social dimension of the single market
against the present pandemic background. He also reiterated solidarity with
Cyprus and Greece and hailed the beginning of talks between Greece and Turkey
pleading for solutions through dialogue to the present situation. President
Iohannis has highlighted the need for a balanced and constructive approach of
the EU-Turkey talks.

PANDEMIC The global number of Covid-19 infections
has reached 34.5 million cases, while some 1.02 million people have died. Over
25.6 million people have recovered, the worldometers.info website reads. In
Brazil there are nearly 145,000 deaths and over 4.8 million confirmed
infections, making it the second-most affected country in the world after the
United States. The US President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that both
himself and his wife, the First Lady, Melania Trump, have tested positive for
COVID-19. In Israel, the infection rate stands at 13% of the total number of
people tested. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the current mobility
restrictions introduced at national level aren’t paying out, so the authorities
are planning on introducing new measures to prevent the disease from spreading.
In Europe major cities in Spain but also the capital city of France will
further tighten health safety measures as of Monday. Even a viable vaccine
against the coronavirus won’t be able to get life back to its normal track next
spring, British scientists have warned. Over 200 vaccines against COVID-19 are
being developed by scientists around the world at unprecedented speed, the BBC
reports.

TENNIS Romanian tennis player Simona Halep on Friday outperformed US
challenger Amanda Anisimova in the third round of the Grand Slam tournament in
Roland Garros. Halep, champion in Paris in 2018 will be up against Iga Swiatek
of Poland in the competition’s next round. Also on Friday, Romanians Patricia
Tig and Andreea Mitu outperformed the Russian-Italian pair Varvara
Gracheva/Jasmine Paolini. The Romanian-Japanese pair Monica Niculescu/Misaki
Doi lost to Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia.

(bill)