The 4th wave peak expected in mid-October, up to 20,000 Covid-19 infections per day

Acting Health Minister, Cseke Attila told Digi 24 that Romania will face the peak of the coronavirus fourth wave in mid-October, with a gloomy perspective ahead: up to 20,000 Covid-19 infections on a daily basis during October 15-20.

“According to experts, the peak of wave 4 will be somewhere in mid-October or a little later. For October 15-20, Romania might reach, unfortunately, up to 20,000 new infections per day”, said Cseke Attila.

He added that an analysis must be done after the pandemic is over to see how it was managed.

As for the current number of beds for patients with Covid, Cseke said that “they might not be enough.”

At the same time, the acting Minister of Health announced that the Government has allocated 460 million lei from the Reserve Fund for expenses with treatments against Covid-19 and the preparation of intensive care units.

The Minister of Health warned that the serious current epidemic situation in Romania is a consequence of the extremely low vaccination rate. The minister says that other countries have already exceeded vaccination rates of 70% or 80% and lifted the restrictions while “we want a country like abroad, but at the individual level we do nothing about it.”

“I don’t think a German or a Dane is worse than a Romanian or a Hungarian in this country. I don’t believe in this theory. But he pursued his own interest, which is also the interest of society, and he got vaccinated. We are still deliberating, we resort to the social media, we go on Facebook, to see what’s up there. We still believe some lies and some fake news instead of relying on what has helped us get rid of diseases in the last 100 years. Vaccines have helped us, that’s the truth, it’s a documented history. We must trust this. Otherwise, we have reached a vaccination rate of 33% and this is where we got all this trouble from, after all. In two weeks we have increased the number of intensive care beds from 660 to 1,320. We have doubled the number. We will keep rising it and we will. We got here because we have such a low level of vaccination. That is the truth,” said Minister Attila Cseke.

However, the Health minister warned that the maximum number of intensive care beds for Covid patients that Romaia has had in the previous waves, less over 1,600, might not be enough in this 4th wave.

Two hospitals in Bucharest, Malaxa and Sf Ioan, will be transformed into exclusively COVID hospitals, next week, if necessary. Minister Cseke said he had asked the prefects and the local public health directions for a plan to gradually reduce non-COVID activities, even though authorities were trying to keep hospitals open for other categories of patients. “This situation is for 3-4 weeks, if it is a temporary issue, we have to find temporary solutions,” he said.

“2-3 flaming weeks are ahead of us, which means responsibility and solidarity from everyone. I don’t want to hear about local patriotism. We cannot refuse a patient because he comes from another county. It happened before. We all need to show solidarity, “said Cseke, stressing that in order to get over wave 4, more and more people need to be vaccinated.