Romania Partially Waives Anti-Covid Restrictions on March 8

The state of alert in Romania will not be extended after March 8. A series of restrictions will be lifted, as Romanian President Klaus Johannis announced, who said that wave 5 of the COVID-19 pandemic is nearing its end in the country.

It’s been two years since Romania entered a state of emergency due to the Covid-19 virus. This period changed many lives and perspectives on how the usual course of life can shift instantly. From wearing a mandatory mask to a lock-down and then to a vaccine, Romania has gone through a series of anti-emptying measures to stop this pandemic.

After all of these, Romania began to relax the pandemic’s restrictions. From March 8, 2022, some of the limitations will no longer be valid and, according to the president of Romania, the state of emergency will not be prolonged.

We are no longer extending the alert status on the Romanian territory beyond March 8. With the lifting of the alert road, a series of measures that have been in force until now will be eliminated. The complete measures will be announced and explained in detail in the next period by the competent authorities.

Klaus Johannes, President of Romania

The main relaxation measures are:

• giving up the outdoor mask
• giving up entry with a green certificate in malls, hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, institutions
• permission to organize private events with up to 200 participants

Many other European countries like Germany, Norway, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal have partially dropped restrictions. The percentage of the vaccinated population exceeds 70% in these countries, while it has not yet exceeded 50% in Romania.

To relax the restrictions, the head of the emergency department, Raed Arafat, mentioned that Romanians would have to live with the virus eventually to return to normal.

I hope to be in the phase where we are as close as possible or wholly usual and to live together, in the end, we will live with this virus. The virus will not disappear, but we will live together, especially if Omicron remains predominant, which is more contagious, but it has a lower virulence.

Raed Arafat, Head of the Emergency Department