Physicians

South Korea's health minister warned of a threat to the lives of patients on Tuesday after medical professors said they might join striking junior doctors engaged in a three-week-long standoff that has plunged healthcare into chaos.

South Korea will send its military and community doctors to hospitals in the next few days as part of emergency measures to support the healthcare system following the mass strike by specialists, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo reported, cited by Reuters.

South Korea called Monday for trainee doctors to return to work, saying they would be spared punitive actions if they went back to the hospitals, as protests over medical reforms entered a second week.

Senior doctors in English hospitals are to stage industrial action for only the third time, forcing the cancellation of routine operations for patients, their union have announced. 

Consultant doctors will strike on July 20 and 21 to press the government for better pay - just after a five-day stoppage by more junior doctors.

A four-day strike planned by tens of thousands of doctors in England next week could lead to the postponement of a quarter-million medical appointments, a National Health Service official has said.

Romanian authorities on Friday reported 13,854 new cases of people infected with COVID-19 in the last 24 hours while Thursday to Friday saw a new record death toll of 385 from COVID, raising the total death toll in the country to 38,927.

The Public Health Department on Friday said the number of infections of COVID-19 in Bucharest had increased to 12.24 per thousand.

Education Minister Sorin Cimpeanu announced that he asked the Finance Ministry to allot funds in the budget revision to ensure funding for over 6,000 more resident doctors in the medical higher education system, registered this year in addition to the number of 2020, the total number in 2021 being 29,000.

Data on the number of those infected in the country are increasingly encouraging, local media reported, adding that the most controversial figure - Swedish chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell - said that according to current estimates by health experts, it was planned to continue to ease some measures.

The top U.S. health agency on May 13 said it was lifting mask-wearing guidance for people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, a watershed moment that President Joe Biden called "a great day" in the long pandemic fight.

Four patients - two women and two men - ages between 62 and 89 were transferred from the blaze-hit "Matei Bals" Institute to the "Marius Nasta" Institute, following the fire that broke out Friday morning at the Bucharest Covid-19 hospital; two of them are in a severe condition, said the manager of the "Marius Nasta" Institute, Beatrice Mahler.