Behind Romania’s Daily High Numbers of COVID-19 Infections

Romania holds another unwanted record in the EU: it daily reports the highest numbers of new infected persons, even more than Spain or Italy. Last week’s daily average exceeded 400 cases and this week even this record will fall.

On Wednesday, July 8, Romania reported 555 cases of new COVID-19 infections, which was a national record since the start of the pandemic. On Thursday, July 9, Romania reported 614 cases, which is another daily record. What is happening? Is the situation so bad as compared to other countries?

So far, different countries hurried to take measures for the Romanian citizens, imposing compulsory quarantine for Romanians who want to enter their territories. Among them, Austria is the most recent one.

More tests, more cases reported

One thing is for sure: the situation, as bad as it seems, is not worse than in April 11, when Romania hit the previous record: 523 infections. Arguably a bad situation, as the number of infected cased came from only 3842 tests, meaning 1 infected person from 7 tests.

Now, the authorities seriously increased the number of COVID-19 tests conducted on a daily basis: July 8, when 555 cases of infections were reported, there were conducted 13,147 tests, meaning 1 infected person from 23 tests. The situation was almost similar on July 9, when 614 new infections were reported and there were conducted 13,179 tests, meaning 1 infected person from 21 tests.

Thus, the number of new infections reported daily increased in Romania, but this is close related to the number of tests conducted. If, by any chance, the authorities would consider testing more people, we would have new records each day.

The people tested by the authorities in Romania is another topic for discussion: the medical authorities test only people who have symptoms or who were in contact with infected persons. Thus, the probability of identifying COVID-19 infected is higher than in the case of mass testing.

As we reported earlier, a mass testing conducted by the Bucharest Municipality showed that only 1 in 1000 people is infected in Bucharest. The mass testing was stopped by the Government for no obvious reason. The Romanian Opposition accuses the Government of trying to hide the low number of infections for their political advantage: if the state of emergency or the state of alert continues in Romania, the governing party is advantaged from political point of view.

A conclusion would be that the situation in Romania was much worse in April, when 1 in 7 tests was positive for COVID-19, as compared to now, when only 1 in 21-23 tests are positive. Of course, it is advisable for the authorities in each country to conduct as many tests as possible, but, on the other hand the number of newly identified infected cases should always be linked to the number of the tests conducted.