December 6, 2021 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news

România Internațional, 06.12.2021, 19:27

Covid-19RO. The number of fully vaccinated persons in Romania has exceeded 7.5 million. Since the start of the vaccination campaign, on December 27, 2020, more than 15 million doses of vaccine have been used in Romania. In another development, one of the two Romanians repatriated from South Africa, who had been vaccinated but who tested positive for the Omicron variant, has mild symptoms, and the other one is asymptomatic. 803 new cases of Covid-19 and 54 deaths were reported on Monday in Romania. With the exception of a county in the west, Arad, which is in the yellow scenario, the rest of Romania is in the green scenario, with an average incidence of 1.25 cases per thousand inhabitants in the last 14 days.

Tests. Since Monday, Romanian students, preschoolers and teachers have to take rapid saliva-based tests to detect any coronavirus infection. The recommendation is for them to be tested twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, but the question remains who will check if the tests are done correctly. The authorities did not establish a unitary procedure and allowed the decisions to be taken by each school. Thus, in some schools the testing is done in the classroom, but in most schools the tests were distributed to parents to test their children at home. The only exceptions are high school students who receive tests from teachers. In total, 6.5 million tests were distributed.

Measures. The Romanian authorities have adopted stricter rules for those entering the country, as a first step in preventing the spread of the new Omicron coronavirus variant. Thus, the mandatory PCR test obtained before the trip is to be taken within 48 hours for those coming from outside the European Union . Another measure is quarantine for those not vaccinated and those who have not had the disease in the past six months. At the same time, all the citizens who return to the country in the next period will be obliged to fill in a passenger location form, a document necessary in carrying out the epidemiological investigation if need be.

Meeting. The Romanian Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, will attend a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday on the coordination of European measures to detect and control the spread of the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 and the acquisition, through a common procedure at EU level, of COVID-19 therapies. EU Health Ministers will also have an exchange of views on the need for the European Commission to set up a specialized service to prepare for emergencies in the field of health.

Constitution. The parliament in Bucharest marked, on Monday, through a solemn sitting, 30 years since the adoption of the current Constitution of Romania, which consecrated the restoration of constitutional democracy and consolidated the pluralist political regime. The fundamental law was approved about two years after the anti-communist revolution of December 1989 and has since been revised only once, in 2003. In his speech in Parliament, the President of the Constitutional Court, Valer Dorneanu, recalled that the drafting, in 1991, of a new Constitution was not easy, the Romanian society being, then, still marked by behavioral automatisms and attitudes formed during half a century spent in communism. At the same time, the Constitution had to be in accordance with the relevant international standards, to include the European democratic heritage and to raise the legal, political and economic life of Romania to a level similar to those of the states with consolidated democratic systems. Romanias Constitution has 156 articles and regulates the general principles of state organization, as well as the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens and public authorities. Since 1995, Romanian Constitution Day has been marked on December 8th.

St. Nicholas. On Monday, December 6, Christians celebrated Saint Nicholas, one of the most popular saints, to whom the tradition of offering gifts to children is linked. He was a bishop at the beginning of the 4th century, in Mira, a fortress in the land of Lycia, in the territory of todays Turkey. He was a very generous man, and his biography contains many stories of him helping those in need. According to tradition, on the eve of the holiday, children clean their boots for the Saint o fill them with sweets and other gifts. The relics of Saint Nicholas are kept in Bari, Italy, and one of his hands is at the Saint George the New Church in the in Bucharest. In Romania, over 800 thousand Romanians celebrated their name day on 6th.

Handball. The Romanian womens handball national team meets, on Tuesday, Norway, in the last stage of Group C of the World Championship in Spain. The Romanians have already qualified for the main groups of the competition after, on Sunday, in their second match, they clearly defeated the Kazakhstan team, score 38-17. Previously, Romania had also defeated Iran. Romanias team is the only one present at all 25 editions of the World Championship and has four medals in its collection: one gold, two silver and one bronze.