Romania is second-to-last in the European Union for vaccinations against COVID-19 according to ECDC data.
Following an announcement from the European Commission on Tuesday, 70% of the EU’s adult population is now fully vaccinated. This equates to over 256 million adults across 27 member states.
In the UK, just under 43 million have received both doses, which means as of August 31st, 64% of the UK is fully vaccinated. However, Romania is second-to-last in the EU.
Romania currently has less than a third of its adult population vaccinated, with only Bulgaria having lower numbers across the EU, where most countries boast vaccination rates of 50% or over within the adult population.
These figures are published amid concerns for Romania’s preparedness for the fourth wave, which has seen better-prepared states struggle to control the spread of the “Delta” variant, which is reported to be more aggressive than previous strains of the virus.
Romania’s COVID-19 cases are increasing over the past 7 days, with 949 new infections reported on average, each day.
The last estimates made by the Romanian authorities, expected somewhere between 1,500 to 1,600 new cases per day, by mid-September, however, that number has now been revised to 2,000 per day.
“We don’t expect a good situation. The revised prediction concerning Romania’s epidemiological situation shows that, until now, the increase in the number of cases was faster than we expected; as such, by mid-September, we expect to have more than 2,000 daily cases instead of 1,500-1,600 we estimated initially. This estimate covers the following four weeks; it doesn’t mean it’s the upper threshold we can reach,” informed Valeriu Gheorghiță, who coordinates the vaccination effort in Romania.
He indicated that the main reason that the numbers are increasing is due to low complicance with the rules and increased interactions.
“What we see in Romania is people’s high mobility and interaction, combined with low compliance with the prevention rules. This is why we don’t expect a better epidemiological situation in the coming period; on the contrary, the situation will worsen against the background of the Delta variant becoming dominant, including in our country” added Gheorghiță.
During the last week reported, Romania averaged about 11,379 doses each day. At that rate, it would take almost a year to administer enough doses for another 10% of the population.
