COVID-19: Romania to Change (Again) the Way It Calculates Incidence Rate

The way the incidence rate for COVID-19 is calculated in Romania is to be changed once again. In February the authorities announced the rate would be calculated by also taking into account the outbreaks. These were not included in the incidence rate formula before. Right after that, the incidence rate grew quicker than before and led to unpopular decisions, such as enforcing quarantine in some cities.

Now, the authorities want to change once again the way the incidence rate is calculated, according to Ministry of Health officials. The change will affect the way local authorities take decisions to enforce the quarantine on a certain area. A final decision is to be taken on Tuesday, March 23.

According to the secretary of state from the Ministry of Health, authorities want to take into consideration more factors when deciding to enforce quarantine in a certain area. So far, the incidence rate of more than 6 per thousand inhabitants in the previous 14 days automatically led to enforcing mandatory quarantine in the respective city. This approach was criticized by the representatives of the bigger cities, saying that more tests automatically led to more infected cases discovered and to a bigger incidence rate.

For example, in the Capital City, Bucharest, they test the most in the country, hence the biggest number of cases in the country, which led to one of the biggest incidence rate. Timisoara, also a big city in the Western Romania, tests big, but also it has a big incidence rate. Local authorities voted for the city to exit quarantine, but the central authorities decided to place Timisoara under quarantine for more days.

Now, specialists advised the government’s officials for more factors to be taken into account, such as the Covid-19 evolution trend, the testing capacity, the number of cases, the number of the localized outbreaks, the number of patients in the ICU sections. All these would led to a more accurate image of what’s really happening on a certain area than only the number of cases.

Besides, the officials want to have a better image of what is happening in the urban and rural areas where the testing rate is very low. Some areas are rendered as “green” on the incidence rate map, but this is only because they don’t test on a large scale there.

Some suspect the decision of changing the incidence rate is taken to save Bucharest from quarantine. According to the current way of calculation, Bucharest has an incidence rate of 5.67 per thousand inhabitants in the last 14 days, which is very close to 6 per thousand. On the current calculation mode, in a few days Bucharest should be placed under quarantine, an unpopular and counter-productive measure economically speaking.

Two opinions are clearly colliding here: on one side there is the Liberal Party leaders’ voice, including the Romanian PM, Mr. Florin Citu, who strongly oppose the quarantine in Bucharest. On the other side there are the officials from the Ministry of Health, including the minister, a member of USR-PLUS political alliance, who are in favor of enforcing quarantine in Bucharest.

Meanwhile, Romania has a good vaccination rate and almost 2 million people have already been vaccinated. According to Mr. Florin Citu, Romania wants to vaccinates 10.4 million persons by September this year. It means 70% of the adult population, which could bring the most wanted community immunization.