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Paramedics bring an elderly patient to the emergency-room-turned-Covid-19-unit at a hospital in Bucharest, on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Romanian doctors issue ‘cry of despair’ amid coronavirus surge

  • The country’s health care system has ‘reached the limit’, and low vaccination rates reveal a ‘failure of trust’, medical workers say in an open letter
  • On Tuesday, Romania reported daily pandemic records of nearly 17,000 new confirmed cases and 442 deaths

Romanian doctors sent an open letter on Wednesday titled “a cry of despair” as the country’s overwhelmed and deteriorated health care system copes with a record-setting surge of coronavirus infections and deaths.

The College of Physicians of Bucharest, a non-governmental organisation representing doctors in Romania’s capital, said in a letter addressed to Romanians that the medical system has “reached the limit” and that low vaccination rates reveal a “failure of trust” between doctors and the population.

“We are desperate because every day we lose hundreds of patients who die in Romanian hospitals,” the letter reads.

“We are desperate, because, unfortunately, we have heard too many times: I can’t breathe … I’m not vaccinated.”

Patients lie on beds in the emergency room, turned into a Covid-19 unit due to the high number of cases, at the Bagdasar-Arseni hospital in Bucharest on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Romania, a country of 19 million people, is the European Union member nation with the population second-least vaccinated against Covid-19.

Just 34 per cent of its adults are fully inoculated, compared to an EU average of 74 per cent.

On Tuesday, Romania reported daily pandemic records of nearly 17,000 new confirmed cases and 442 deaths.

Data from health authorities indicate that more than 90 per cent of coronavirus patients who died last week were unvaccinated against Covid-19.

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“Every day we witness tragedies: dying patients, suffering families, doctors who have reached the end of their powers,” the letter from Bucharest’s doctors reads.

The pressure on hospitals prompted Romanian officials last week to suspend non-emergency medical procedures for 30 days and to ask the EU for help.

Janez Lenarcic, the EU commissioner for crisis management, said last week that the EU would send 250 oxygen concentrators to Romania, which on Tuesday received 5,200 doses of monoclonal antibodies from Italy.

Several dozen Covid-19 patients will also be sent to intensive care units in Hungary this week.

A woman breathing through an oxygen mask gets an injection in the emergency room, turned into a Covid-19 unit, at a hospital in Bucharest on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Dragos Zaharia, a primary care doctor at Bucharest’s Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology, thinks Romanian authorities should have enlisted a “famous personality” to lead the country’s vaccination campaign.

“Only anonymous guys are leading this fight,” Zaharia said.

“It’s heartbreaking for us when we know that a lot of those who died could have lived, if they would have been vaccinated.”

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