Bucharest Mayor: We Cannot Afford Mass Testing for COVID-19

Nicusor Dan, the Bucharest mayor, says that Bucharest cannot afford a mass testing for COVID-19 at the moment.

A PCR test costs EUR 50. For doing that in Bucharest, to do a mass testing for a population of 2 million people, we need EUR 100 M, which we don’t have at the moment. We’d better do mass testing with the quick tests, which are ten times cheaper, two of them being already approved by the WHO.

Nicusor Dan, Bucharest City Mayor

This news came as the Romanian minister of Economy announced today that 50% of the sanitary face masks sold in Romania DO NOT protect against COVID-19. This happens in a country which recently has passed 10,000 COVID-19 related deaths.

The false feeling of safety, combined with the lack of public funds for COVID-19 mass testing and adding the lack of beds within the emergency rooms – all these might prove too great a burden for the authorities in their fight against the pandemic. Still, there is hope: the Romanian minister of Finance announced also today that Romania has already paid a down payment of almost EUR 12 M for the COVID-19 vaccine contracted by the European Commission. The first doses could reach the European countries in January next year and the vaccination campaigns could start immediately across EU.