CORONAVIRUS – PM Nicolae Ciuca on Monday had a working meeting with people in charge with managing the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the latest evolutions of the disease in the country and across the EU were discussed. Measures to protect the population, keep schools open and the economy running were also tackled. 1756 cases of Covid-19 were reported in Romania in the last 24 hours, out of 30 thousand tests. 18 people died in the same interval for Covid-related causes. The capital Bucharest registered the biggest number of new infections — 146. According to data provided by the National Institute of Statistics, the infection rate in Romania has gone up slightly to 0.60. The total number of patients treated in Romanian hospitals is close to 2,500, of whom 403 in intensive care. Public health specialists and authorities are warning that some 100 cases of infection with the Omicron variant have already been confirmed across the country, and estimates show that it will become dominant within the next two weeks. The bleakest of the wave 5 scenarios speaks of around 25 thousand new cases per day in the peak period and a huge pressure on the health-care system. The vaccination pace continues to be extremely low. In Romania, a little over 7.8 million people have been fully vaccinated since the start of the vaccination campaign.
REGISTRY – The Permanent Electoral Authority in Romania has announced that the total number of citizens entitled to vote, included in the Electoral Registry on December 31, 2021 is 18,875,052. Of them, 18,105,818 have their domicile or residence in the country while 769,243 have their domicile abroad. The Electoral Registry is a national IT system that registers and updates the ID data of the Romanians entitled to vote and the constituencies where they can cast their ballot.
DIASPORA – Of all the citizens of the 27 member states of the European Union, in 2020, Romanians in the diaspora sent home the largest sums of money. According to Eurostat data, the approximately 3.6 million Romanians living and working abroad officially sent home about 3.4 billion euros, while the Spaniards sent 2.9 billion euros and the Poles 2.8 billion euros, these being the states with the highest revenues in remittances in 2020. According to Eurostat, at the level of the entire European Union, the volume of remittances decreased by 9% in 2020 compared to 2019. In Romania the decrease was of only 7% as compared to 50% in Hungary and 71% in Bulgaria.
COURT – Romanian cases pending before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have dropped from 7,500 at the beginning of 2021 to less than 5,000. According to Judge Iulia Motoc, if this pace continues, “in 2022 we can hope that Romania will no longer be the fourth country in terms of the number of ECHR cases”. Most of the cases pending before the ECHR are still about detention conditions, the ECHR judge Iulia Motoc has said.
HANDBALL – Romanias mens national handball team has gathered to train for the preliminary qualifying tournament of the World Championship, on home turf in Cluj-Napoca (northwest). Between January 7-9, 2022, the Romanians will take on the national teams of Israel, Cyprus and the Republic of Moldova. Last week, Romania played, also in Cluj, two training matches with the Turkish national team, and won both of them. The friendly matches replaced in the program of the two teams a new edition of the traditional Carpathian Trophy, which was canceled, as several members of the Swiss and Iranian teams tested positive for Covid-19. The coach of the Romanian team is the famous Spanish Xavi Pasqual, who won the Champions League with Barcelona three times. (EE)
