Secretary of state with the Ministry of Interior (MAI) Raed Arafat on Saturday stated that it's very possible the emergency state declared in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to be prolonged by another month, with the actual decision to be taken next week.

"It's very possible that we prolong the state of emergency by another month. We will make the decision next week, before the last day of the state of emergency," said Arafat, in a phone call with private television broadcaster Digi 24.

The MAI official said it was not clear yet how long the COVID-19 crisis will last in Romania.

"It depends because you saw that in some countries the curve continued to climb and then it started to go down very fast, while in other countries the curve maintained at a high level. It's very hard to make predictions. But my opinion is that we will not be able to come out of this situation before the end of May. Because even if it slows down, we will still have to fight it, we cannot just stop and relax all measures that we are taking right now," mentioned Raed Arafat.

He added that it's possible the measures regarding the novel coronavirus to be somehow more relaxed in June, but this depends on how the pandemic will evolve until that date.

"Anything it's possible, but all that I can say is this [that the measures might be more relaxed in June - editor's note], depending on how things evolve. It's very difficult to answer such questions and I prefer not to mention any dates, a precise number of days, or months, it depends very much on how it will evolve," he said.

"The state of emergency was decreed by President Klaus Iohannis on March 16, for 30 days. AGERPRES (RO - author: Marius Fratila, editor: Catalina Matei; EN - author: Cristina Zaharia)