Low vaccinated Romania falls onto hard times.

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Romania's health system torn apart by Covid.
1 hr ago.

"School holidays start on Monday," President Klaus Iohannis announced
glumly.

Initially for two weeks, but no-one dares guess when children might
return, because Romania is in the grip of a wave of Covid-19 far more
deadly than anything it experienced until now.

To make matters worse, Romania has had no effective government since the
start of the month.

The purple and red patches on the map, indicating high levels of the
virus, adjusted daily by researchers at the Babes-Bolyai University in
Cluj, continue to spread.

Romania's 2,000 intensive care beds are all full, and patients are now
having to wait outside. The first 50 critically ill patients have been
transferred to hospitals in Hungary and Poland.

"Sometimes I feel like the whole country has become a resuscitation
department," said Dorel Sandesc, head of intensive care at Timisoara
hospital in western Romania.

"It is a national failure on all levels. We are witnessing a kind of
national blindness, caused by the lack of education, by the lack of
civilisation," Dr Sandesc, who's vice-chairman of the Romanian Society
of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, told the Puterea a Cincea website.

Vaccination levels now stand at little more than 29% of the whole
population and 34% of the adult population, the second lowest in the EU
after Bulgaria.

Politicians are blaming the public for refusing to get vaccinated and
believing conspiracy theories about the danger of the vaccines.

The public blames the politicians - for poor leadership, inadequate
healthcare, and above all for vanity and corruption.

This weekend, the latest "vaccination marathon" is being held in the
capital, Bucharest, with six centres open 24 hours a day, to encourage
the reluctant. In the first two hours on Friday more than 1,000 people
got the jab.

Back in June Romania's decision to relax restrictions was hugely popular
and loudly trumpeted by then Prime Minister Florin Citu. Medical
commentators felt it was rash and irresponsible.

Romania's healthcare system, stretched to capacity by years of both
neglect and corruption, is coming apart at the seams, despite the
everyday heroics of medical staff.

Now, on a seven-day average, 15,000 people a day are testing positive in
this population of 19.4 million:

574 people died last Tuesday
On average 389 deaths per day over seven days
226 people have died per million in the past 14 days
EU average is 24 deaths per million
At the vaccination centre in Rosiori de Vede, a small town nearly two
hours south-west of Bucharest, they've just moved the vaccination centre
from the sports stadium to a pensioner's club with just two rooms.

"We had to scale down because the gym was too big for the low number of
people getting vaccinated in our town," says Liliana Catrinoiu, director
of the centre.

The public blames the politicians - for poor leadership, inadequate
healthcare, and above all for vanity and corruption.

This weekend, the latest "vaccination marathon" is being held in the
capital, Bucharest, with six centres open 24 hours a day, to encourage
the reluctant. In the first two hours on Friday more than 1,000 people
got the jab.

Back in June Romania's decision to relax restrictions was hugely popular
and loudly trumpeted by then Prime Minister Florin Citu. Medical
commentators felt it was rash and irresponsible.

Romania's healthcare system, stretched to capacity by years of both
neglect and corruption, is coming apart at the seams, despite the
everyday heroics of medical staff.

Now, on a seven-day average, 15,000 people a day are testing positive in
this population of 19.4 million:

Gallery: Inside Moscow hospital overwhelmed with COVID-19 amid record
deaths (Reuters).

574 people died last Tuesday
On average 389 deaths per day over seven days
226 people have died per million in the past 14 days
EU average is 24 deaths per million
At the vaccination centre in Rosiori de Vede, a small town nearly two
hours south-west of Bucharest, they've just moved the vaccination centre
from the sports stadium to a pensioner's club with just two rooms.

"We had to scale down because the gym was too big for the low number of
people getting vaccinated in our town," says Liliana Catrinoiu, director
of the centre.

"A large part of the population preferred to believe all the alarmist
and sensational news related to vaccination."

During the summer, Romania sold on unwanted vaccines to Ireland, Denmark
and Vietnam, because of low domestic interest.

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From Monday, masks will be compulsory nationwide, inside and outside
buildings, and the unvaccinated will not be allowed out on the streets
after 20:00. How strictly this will be enforced is another matter.

In Piata Unirii in Timisoara, a waiter at an up-market bar overheard one
customer telling another that he was not vaccinated, just as he was
putting their drinks down on the table.

"Drink up fast,", he remarked, looking around for any sign of the
Gendarmerie. "But then you must leave."

At a wedding last weekend in the north-eastern city of Botosani, the
groom was refused entry to his own wedding party, after testing
positive, according to local media.

There was no information about the couple's whereabouts later that
evening.

The Orthodox Church in Romania has been fiercely criticised by medical
professionals for pouring doubt on the safety and efficacy of the
vaccines, although a Church spokesman last week publicly urged people to
get vaccinated.

"In the first wave of the pandemic, Father Bartolomeu died," Father
Atal, a monk wrote to me from the Orthodox monastery at Dervent, on the
shore of the River Danube in eastern Romania.

"Then the rest of us either went through Covid with mild symptoms, or
got vaccinated."

There are currently three cases in the monastery, one aged 78, another
35, another 30. All with moderate symptoms, all in isolation in their
rooms.

"I go down to the river at least once a week. It flows quietly. The
river has seen other pandemics and knows that man wins in the end, with
all the sacrifices involved."

Additional reporting by Mircea Barbu.