The Minister of Health has officially announced the reasons for the last-minute measures that were taken in Romania for all Romanians, and this is because we are talking about emergency decisions taken due to the large number of flu cases lately, everything being thought that way so that the epidemic is not declared, at all.
The Minister of Health explains that due to a law adopted in the first year of the Coronavirus pandemic, which has not yet ended, if a flu epidemic were to be declared, isolation and quarantine measures would be reintroduced for infected persons, or contacts, as that this is not desired in the case of flu epidemic weeks.
"We are in a state of epidemic alert, that's what we'll call it, because that's how it's formulated, the instruction will refer to a state of epidemic alert, and the measures are those specified previously. Medicines have started to return to pharmacies, we have a meeting with distributors and manufacturers, I am convinced that we will find a solution, they must supply any of the products on the lists.
We must have all the stocks of antivirals in all the hospitals, some hospitals have stocks for a year, others have very small stocks. This was one of the discussions with the DSPs, to balance these stocks, so that each hospital has stocks for 3 months, because anyway this situation will not last very long in Romania in the coming weeks.
I don't want to confuse things (ed. I asked under what conditions a flu epidemic is declared, and who is responsible for the consequences of non-declaration) admission to hospitals has nothing to do with the declaration of the epidemic. There we were talking about quarantine and isolation, including contacts, that's what we were talking about. The situation can be more difficult in some hospitals, but that's why we created the outpatient evaluation centers.
We appeal to addressability to the family doctor, it is the natural option, and at the moment we have no signals that, with the exception of some hospitals that are profiled, in which other hospitals, as was the case during the pandemic, can receive people with respiratory viruses. There is no problem of clogging the emergency departments.
We are monitoring carefully, and we have no information about overcrowding in the intensive care units at the moment. My opinion is that we will not reach a large number of flu cases, this situation has already lasted for 3 weeks, and in 2/3 weeks, at most, we will witness a decrease in the number of cases, but we cannot take measures that to block economic or social activity in Romania again."
