Health Minister Nelu Tataru said today that we are in a pandemic stage with a strong community spread and that if safety rules are not observed, the intensive care units will get overcrowded and Romania risks to repeat what happened in Italy and Spain in March and April this year.

"The development of the pandemic is not decided in medical units. Medical units handle the treatment and save the lives of the already infected patients. Let us not reach a high number of infected patients, and this very much depends on the observance of the rules. I repeat this - wearing a mask in closed spaces, in crowded places, in public transport and at the job, using disinfectant and enforcing physical distancing. (...) If we abide by these requirements, a plateau and then a decrease in case numbers will be noticeable in a week, a week and a half. This may be the start of this first pandemic episode's subsiding. If we don't follow these rules, we'll see case numbers rising from one day to another and an overcrowding of emergency units and infectious disease departments. Even if we adjust the number of beds according to needs, we shouldn't rely on this alone. A large number of cases will overload the intensive care units and we could repeat the experience of Italy and Spain this March and April. I don't want us to end up like that and this only depends on us," Tataru said on Monday at broadcaster Digi 24.

The Health Minister cautioned that the responsibility for containing the spread of the virus does not fall exclusively on the Ministry, the government or the medical staff, but that it's for the companies that had the lockdown eased for them to carry out their economic activity and for the main beneficiaries - the population that visits the terraces, shops, or rides the public transport, to abide by the rules. "We are in a pandemic context, we are in a context of strong community transmission," Tataru said.

The Health Minister explained that the transmission can also happen in public transport means.

"We have proof that community transmission happens in public transport to work, as we see in the counties of Arges, Dambovita, Prahova. We have the tests carried out in economic units and we see those positive cases. The number of symptomless persons is quite high, but they act as spreaders, wether we want it or not. (...) The virus does not pick, does not sleep, the virus does not rest from 11 pm. Airborne transmission can occur at any time in urban agglomeration," Tataru explained. AGERPRES (RO - author: Livia Popescu, editor: Georgiana Tanasescu; EN - author/editor: Simona Klodnischi)