Minister of Health Alexandru Rafila declared on Thursday that Romania is currently under epidemiological alert in the context of the increase in the number of respiratory infections and clinically confirmed cases of influenza, specifying that he is not declaring an epidemic, since it would imply a return to „certain restrictions”, such as those during the pandemic with the novel coronavirus, according to Agerpres.

The minister stated that the week of December 26 – January 1 is the third „epidemic” week.

„According to the provisions of Law 95, there is an epidemiological alert, because declaring the epidemic based on a ministerial order would put us in a situation where… There is a law adopted during the pandemic, Law 136, and this law automatically generates, by the issuance of a ministerial order, certain restrictions. (…) You saw that our approach was one that would support the normal course of economic and social activity, keep schools open, not to introduce issues related to quarantine, isolation, because issuing a ministerial order would have generated such a situation. Then, I prefer to adopt, because it is not a dramatic situation, it is a situation – if you want – without precedent in this period. You have seen that in other periods, for example, 5 years ago or 10 years ago, in February, we had more cases of respiratory viruses. We also reached 170,000 cases of respiratory viruses per week. It is earlier than in other periods,” explained Rafila.

He said that he prefers issuing recommendations instead of restrictions.

Agerpres