Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said that according to the World Health Organization, the pandemic is still a major public health emergency, even if Romania is currently in a favorable situation. Rafila stated that we have 10,000-12,000 cases of Covid-19 every week.

Asked on Sunday night on Antena 3 if the Covid-19 pandemic is still a pandemic, Alexandru Rafila replied that there are hundreds of thousands of cases or even more every day, as quoted by News.ro.

“From the point of view of the World Health Organization, the pandemic is still a major public health emergency and I cannot classify it otherwise for the very simple reason that when you have hundreds of thousands of cases or even more every day that leads to thousands of deaths, it remains a public health problem,” Rafila explained

The Minister of Health said that Romania is now in a favorable situation.

“At the moment, we have a favorable situation, because we register about 10-12 thousand cases every week, the number of deaths has decreased significantly, several deaths are registered every day. That is, it is not a picture, at least at this point, that is more alarming than the one that is registered every year during the flu season, because we are still discussing the virus. Unlike influenza, for which the etiological diagnosis is less precise, i.e. not that the diagnosis is less accurate, but the diagnosis is not as systematic as in the case of Covid, for the most part the number of cases of influenza is extrapolated depending on the number of viruses tested in the sentinel system in certain areas,” Rafila added.

Alexandru Rafila explained that if there is still transmission from the community, then we are talking about a pandemic.

“If you have public transmission and it still exists in many countries, on more than one or two continents, then we are talking about a pandemic. We also have a pandemic of other diseases, there is an HIV pandemic. A public health emergency has been declared. A pandemic does not necessarily mean a public health emergency, we have this connection between a pandemic, that is, a disease that is transmitted by a community on several continents, but creates problems for public health systems. Because of this, this Covid pandemic has been declared a major emergency in the field of health care,” the minister emphasized.

“Only the WHO can reduce the level of the pandemic,” Alexandru Rafila added.