COVID-19 IN ROMANIA – Some 5,600 new cases of COVID-19 infection were
\nreported in Romania on Friday, the Group for Strategic Communication announced.
\nAnother 143 related fatalities were also signaled during a 24-hour interval. The
\nnumber of people currently in intensive care has exceeded 1,300, a national
\nrecord since the start of the pandemic. Over 887,000 people got infected with
\nSARS-CoV-2 in Romania starting last year. Bucharest and another eight counties
\nare in the so-called red scenario, where the incidence of the virus exceeds 3
\nper thousand inhabitants. Several localities around the capital city are now
\nunder lockdown. On the other hand, starting December 27, 2020, over 1.6 million
\npeople have been vaccinated in Romania with one of the three serums being
\nrolled out in Romania – Pfizer- BioNTech, Modern and AstraZeneca. On Monday,
\nthe vaccination campaign entered its third stage addressing the general
\npopulation. For the time being, the campaign is carried out in localities where
\nthe incidence rate exceeds 4.5 per thousand inhabitants. The rest of the population
\ncan register on waiting lists on the online platform. <\/p>\n
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VACCINE – Several European countries, including France,
\nGermany and Spain, have announced they will resume administering the AstraZeneca
\nanti-COVID-19 vaccine, after European pharmaceutical agencies announced the
\nvaccine is safe and effective. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency
\nexpressed confidence the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks,
\nconsidering many countries expressed concerns after blood clots were identified
\nin people who were given the serum. The WHO Director for Europe, Hans Kluge,
\nalso said the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh any potential health
\nrisks, adding that European countries should continue administering the vaccine
\nto help save lives. So far, over 45 million doses of AstraZeneca have been
\nadministered in the European Economic Area. <\/p>\n
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CVM – The European Commission supports the lifting of the Cooperation and
\nVerification Mechanism monitoring the Romanian judiciary by the end of 2021,
\nPrime Minister Florin C\u00ee\u0163u said on a Facebook post. The announcement follows a
\nmeeting with European Commission vice-president, Vera Jourov\u00e1. Florin C\u00ee\u0163u says
\nthe Government wants to eliminate and repair the amendments brought to the justice
\nlaws over 2017-2019, and shares the Commission’s desire to finalize by mid-2021
\nall commitments regarding the rule of law. The European Commission has mainly
\nrecommended the elimination of the Special Section Investigating Crime in
\nJustice, the update of the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code,
\ncontinuing the fight against corruption and defending freedom and pluralism of
\nthe press. <\/p>\n
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PLAN – The Government in Bucharest is today holding a special meeting to
\ndiscuss the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, before adopting it next
\nweek. The document must be submitted to the European Commission in April, so
\nthat Romania should be allotted \u20ac30 billion worth of developments funds until
\n2026, by which date all projects included in the plan must be completed. Prime
\nMinister Florin C\u00ee\u0163u said the Plan represents a huge opportunity for a swift
\neconomic recovery and improving Romanians’ living standards. <\/p>\n
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RUSSIA – Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is ready to hold online talks
\nwith the American President Joe Biden, Reuters reports. The White House, on the
\nother hand, says Biden doesn’t regret calling the Kremlin leader a killer.
\nMoreover, Moscow said Biden’s statements are a clear sign Washington isn’t in
\nthe least interested in repairing relations with Moscow. On Wednesday, Russia
\nrecalled its ambassador to the United States for consultations, expressing, at
\nthe same time, its willingness to avoid an irreversible degradation of
\nrelations with the USA. <\/p>\n
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TENNIS – Romanian tennis player
\nJaqueline Cristian (160 WTA) is today playing Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia (39
\nWTA) in the quarterfinals of the WTA 500 tournament in St. Petersburg, totaling
\n565 thousand dollars in prizes. On Thursday, Cristian ousted Jelena Ostapenko
\nof Latvia, a former winner at Roland Garros and seeded 6th in the
\ncompetition. In the doubles, the pair made up of Monica Niculescu of Romania
\nand
\nLesley Pattinama Kerkhove of the Netherlands are today playing Raluca Olaru of
\nRomania and Nadia Kicenok of Ukraine in the semi-finals. The top favorites,
\nOlaru and Kicenok, ousted Arina Rodionova of Australia and
\nRosalie Van Der Hoeck of the Netherlands in the quarterfinals. (V.P.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A roundup of domestic and international news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":75903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[35953,31436,35374,31771,36097,36094,36018,32305],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-104974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-astrazeneca","tag-cooperation-and-verification-mechanism","tag-covid-19","tag-ema","tag-jaqueline-cristian","tag-national-recovery-and-resilience-plan","tag-russia-us-relations","tag-vaccination-campaign"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n