Campaign coordinator Gheorghita says safety levels hard to establish amidst pandemic

Chairman of Romania's National COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination Committee (CNCAV) Valeriu Gheorghita said on Tuesday, when asked about possible COVID-19 relaxation measures announced by Prime Minister Florin Citu, that safety levels are very difficult to set up amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, emphasising the importance of vaccination against COVID-19. "It is very difficult, in the midst of a pandemic, to establish a level of safety from which you are convinced that things cannot get worse epidemiologically. That is why it is important that as many people as possible be vaccinated, because a vaccinated person is a person who is much better protected in terms of responsiveness to the infection and responsiveness decreases. When keeping a pandemic in check is done by restrictive measures only, the same critical population mass will be in place responsive to the infection. When a raft of measures is being relaxed, the same critical mass population will interact even when we talk about a virus circulating in the population, and within a certain period of time, you will surely see an increase in the number of cases," Gheorghita told a news conference. He said that if the vaccination campaign speeds up at the same time with restrictive measures, once they are relaxed, "the likelihood of having an epidemiological relapse decreases greatly." "It is essential to reduce the critical mass of the prone population as much as possible. When we ease up restrictions, there is a very low risk of relapsing from an epidemiological point of view and of re-entering a period of restrictions. To us, it is essential to make sure vulnerable people are prioritised," added Gheorghita. Prime Minister Florin Citu said on Tuesday that restaurants and hotels on the Black Sea coast could operate at full capacity from June 1 for vaccinated people. He also said that the mandate to wear a face mask in public could be waived only after August 1, insisting that it all comes down to the mass immunisation speed. AGERPRES (RO - author: Florentina Peia, editor: Florin Marin; EN -author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)

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