Preventive quarantine against the coronavirus
Three men asked to be quarantined in Romania after returning from region affected by coronavirus.
Leyla Cheamil, 05.02.2020, 13:50
Every day, there are more and more cases
of infection with the new coronavirus. First identified in December last year
at a food market in Wuhan, a city in central China with 11 million inhabitants,
the virus that causes pneumonia is spreading at an alarming rate around the
world. There are hundreds of confirmed deaths in China and tens of thousands of
people are carrying the new virus around the world.
No case of infection has yet been
reported in Romania, but, as a precaution, three men from Tulcea county, in the
south-east, are in quarantine, at their own request, after returning a few days
ago from the region affected by the virus. They don’t show any symptoms
associated with the virus, but will be monitored for 14 days. The foreign
ministry says it maintains contact with the Romanian students on different
scholarships in China, ready to provide consular assistance if necessary, given
the epidemic in that country.
At the same time, the government in
Bucharest approved on Tuesday the creation of medical emergency stocks in the
event of epidemics and the measures to instate quarantine, measures that are
laid down in a government order that also provides for the purchase of thermal
scanners to be used at the 16 airports around the country. The interior
minister Marcel Vela says the government order in question gives his ministry
the power to instate quarantine for persons entering Romanian territory and who
come from the affected areas as a precaution measure and to prevent the spread
of infection in the case of epidemics, pandemics and in cases of international
public health emergency as declared by the World Health Organisation.
The new virus that has sparked so
much concern around the world has also led in some cases to the suspension of
economic activities. A South-Korean car-making group has announced plans to
suspend its entire production because of the lack of spare parts, while an
international conference on aviation due in Singapore and a clock fair to be
held in Switzerland were cancelled.
The epidemic of viral pneumonia that
appeared in China is not for the moment a pandemic, a word used to describe a
situation characterised by the spread of a disease at world level, the World
Health Organisation has emphasised. The latter says there is still time to
prevent the new coronavirus from becoming a bigger global crisis. The epidemic
is, first of all, an emergency in China, and managing the virus where it first
appeared is the best way to prevent it from spreading, the World Health
Organisation has pointed out.
