Romania, last in EU for vaccination pace as new COVID-19 cases rise

Romania is currently last in the European Union (EU) for the pace of its vaccination campaign, while the number of new COVID-19 cases has risen to the highest level since the end of May. With an average of 0.06 doses of vaccine administered per 100 inhabitants in the last seven days, Romania was last in the EU on August 16, according to VaccinationEU data quoted by hotnews.ro. The current vaccination rate in Romania is half compared to that of Bulgaria (0.13 vaccines per 100 inhabitants on average in the last seven days) and 7.5 times lower than the EU average (0.45 vaccines per 100 inhabitants). On the opposite end, Denmark has administered 0.94 vaccine doses per 100 inhabitants on average over the last seven days. In fact, Romania has sold vaccines to Denmark and other EU countries in recent months because Romanian citizens are not interested in getting vaccinated while other EU countries don’t have enough vaccines for everyone. Romania is now second to last in the EU for the share of adults vaccinated with at least one dose, with 32.1%, ahead only of Bulgaria (20.5%), according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control's COVID-10 Vaccine Tracker. The EU-wide percentage of vaccinated adults is 73.8%. Meanwhile, the number of new COVID-19 cases in Romania has started to rise in the last two weeks, after a relaxed summer season with very few infection cases. On Tuesday, August 17, Romania reported 544 new cases confirmed in the last 24 hours, the highest number since May 20, the Strategic Communication Group (GCS), the official novel coronavirus communication task force, reported on Wednesday.These are cases of patients that have not previously tested positive.As of Wednesday, 1,088,594 cases of people infected with the novel coronavirus were confirmed in Romania. Of these, 1,050,600 were declared cured.To date, 8,920,131 RT-PCR tests and 2,130,866 rapid antigen tests have been processed nationwide.In the last 24 hours, 15,582 RT-PCR tests were performed (6,381 based on the case definition and medical protocol and 9,201 on request) and 19,462 rapid antigen tests.Aside from the newly confirmed cases, following the retesting of patients who were already positive, 99 people were reconfirmed positive.