Over 200,000 Romanians back to the country since the coronavirus outbreak. Military medical staff infected in Galati and Focsani

By Diana Salceanu Last updated Mar 27, 2020

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Over 200,000 Romanians who worked abroad have returned to the country since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, with many of them coming from those EU countries strongly affected by the pandemic, PM Ludovic Orban said on Friday.

“On February 25 there was only one case in Romania, two cases of coronavirus in Spain, and several others in France. Look at the number of cases in Romania, less over 1,000, and if we also take into the account the cured ones, we have below 1,000 patients with COVID-19, while there are tens of thousands of infections in other countries. Romania has taken serious measures from the start”, the premier stated.

Besides, he underlined that Romania had another particularity as against the other countries, namely that over 200,000 Romanians from Diaspora returned to the homeland. “If we had not taken severe containment measures, be it quarantine or isolation, the spread would have been larger”, Orban added.

24 doctors and nurses from the military hospitals in Focsani and Galati, infected

The toll of the medical staff infected with COVID-19 is on the rise in Romania, as five doctors from the Military Hospitals in Galati have tested positive, the Defence ministry announced in a press release on Friday. They are adding to the 19 other military doctors and nurses from the Military Hospital in Focsani who had been infected by two of their colleagues.

There are cases of doctors and nurses infected with the new coronavirus in other Romanian city, with the peak being reported in Suceava, where over 150 members of the County Hospital’s medical personnel testing positive for COVID-9.

The county in the north of Romania is thus considered the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the country. Nine people, patients in Suceava’s front hospital also, have died from the deadly virus so far.

The new Health minister who went on scene at Suceava, said on Friday that there were some breaches in respecting the protocol of the actions the hospital management was supposed to take due to the epidemic.

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