The fourth wave of COVID-19 in Romania has been hitting the country much harder than experts predicted, citing low vaccination rates and non-compliance being the main reason that the Romania has been struggling to keep the virus under control, with an average of 14,210 new infections reported each day.

Cluj-Napoca, has been seeing cases rise considerably since August 20th, 2021, despite having the highest vaccination rate in the country at 47.19% on October 16th, 2021 and the second highest vaccination rate as a county in Romania compared to the capital, Bucharest (38.3% vs 38.6%).

Since cases began to rise, Cluj-Napoca started progressing steadily through various restriction scenarios, which saw the the introduction of limits on capacity of venues and later, the introduction of nighttime curfews for non-vaccinated people and the total closure of bars and similar businesses.

11.19 vs 11.24

On Sunday, October 17th, 2021, Cluj-Napoca saw the first drop in cumulative cases in almost 60 days. For the past 10 days, the city has been under it's toughest restrictions, reminders of those which were lifted in April 2021, following the city dropping below 7/1000 for more than 14 days.

The rate dropped from 11.24, recorded on October 16th to 12.19 on October 17th. Not a huge drop, but a welcome sign that things might be heading in the right direction.

If the cumulative incident rate is less than 7/1000 for 14 days, then once again, unvaccinated people will be able to travel outside of the home between Monday and Thursday past 8pm and shops will be permitted to open again past 10pm.

Romania and COVID-19

During the past 5 days, the number of new cases in Romania have been consistently over 15,000 per day, the highest daily count since the pandemic began.

On October 12th, Romania recorded it's highest daily death rate of COVID-19 patients of 442, however, in the same 5-day period, the amount of lives being lost to COVID-19 in Romania has not dropped below 300.

On October 14th 2021, the Ministry of Health reported that there are no longer any free intensive care beds for COVID-19 across the entire country, with the exception of those have a combination of both COVID-19 and other urgent medical care needs.

The update of vaccines in Romania, initially was off to a great start, however, the percentage of the population which has received both vaccination injections slowed down from Week 23.

Only since September 28th, have new daily doses exceeded 42,000, the last time new doses were that high, was on June 11th, 2021.