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COVID-19 Roughly 120 thousand people have got the anti-Covid vaccine in Romania in the past 24 hours, out of whom 82 thousand got the first jab. The number of those fully vaccinated has exceeded 6.2 million and the vaccine rollout has been given such a boost of late making the authorities to predict that if the pace maintained until the end of the year Romania could have a rate of 70% vaccinated. Over 12,100 new infections were reported on Saturday as well as 413 fatalities. Roughly 20 thousand people are currently being treated in hospitals, out of whom 1858 in ICUs. A medical team from Germany has arrived in Romania to asses Covid-infected patients who can be treated in hospitals in that country and an aircraft belonging to German air forces has been made available for the transport of these patients. In another development, Romania is to receive next week a batch of 10 thousand monoclonal antibodies as part of the contract the European Commission has signed with the producer, Romania's Health Minister Andrei Baciu has announced. The country's National Committee for Emergency Situations has also updated the list of countries and territories with a high-risk of infection with the Netherlands and Russia in the red tier. In the yellow zone there are Malaysia, Cuba, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein or Jordan. Palestine has been included in the green tier.
VACCINE The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 to include children 5 through 11 years of age thus paving the way for a new major stage of the vaccine rollout targeting 28 million children in the country. The authorization was based on the FDA's thorough and transparent data assessment that included input from independent advisory committee experts who overwhelmingly voted in favor of making the vaccine available to children in this age bracket. At least 246 million Covid-19 infections have been reported worldwide so far and 5 million people have died, according to worldmeters.info.
DST On Saturday night Romanians will adjust their clocks setting them back by one hour as part of the Daylight Saving Time practice. So, the day of October 31st is going to be the year's longest day with 25 hours and Romania is going to have a two-hour GMT advance. The DST started being implemented by the European countries in the past century in an attempt to save on electricity, mainly during the war and the oil crises in back in the 1970s. However, doctors believe that the DST can affect the bodies of children and the elderly alike as it takes up to two weeks for people to adjust to the change. This year might be the last in which the DST can be applied as the European Parliament in 2019 voted in favour of scrapping the practice. Romania has not made a decision in this respect yet.
GOVERNMENT Romania's Prime Minister designate, retired general Nicolae Ciuca, is to submit to Parliament today the ruling programme and the list of the cabinet ministers endorsed by the National Liberal party PNL. The new cabinet is to be sworn in next week. Ciuca says that although mathematically speaking, the cabinet he proposes stands no chances to be approved, talks are underway with MPs until the last moment. The interim Prime Minister and PNL leader Florin Citu has given assurances the new cabinet will get the necessary votes. His opinion is not shared by Kelemen Hunor, leader of the partner UDMR, who believes the minority Executive will not get support and that rebuilding the coalition with USR would have been the best alternative. The opposition Social Democrats and USR have announced they are not going to vote for the new cabinet. The political situation in Romania went south after USR had left the coalition government headed by Florin Citu and voted for a PSD-initiated censure motion against it jointly with the nationalist opposition AUR. Former Chief of Staff and Defence Minister, General Ciuca is presently a PNL senator and the second Prime Minister designated to forge a new government after the abortive attempt of USR leader Dacian Ciolos. Pundits believe, a rejection of the Ciuca cabinet would pave the way for snap election although the Constitution allows president Iohannis to propose a third Prime Minister.
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