Head of the Romanian Microbiology Society (SRM) Alexandru Rafila says the number of cases of infection with the novel coronavirus is increasing due to the "increasing" community transmission that occurs in various areas of the country, including the Capital City Bucharest.

"The number of cases is increasing due to the increasing community transmission that occurs in various areas of the country, including the Capital City Bucharest. (...) While also including those who come to Bucharest just for a temporary stay, we have 20 per cent of the total cases here, in Bucharest. It is clear that we have community transmission, meaning that people get infected after getting into contact with an infected person they don't know, and we cannot trace that, we cannot test the persons around that person who got infected, because we don't know who made her/his sick in the first place," Rafila told Digi 24 private television broadcaster on Wednesday evening.

Asked if he thinks schools reopening has anything to do with the increase in the number of infections with the novel coronavirus, Rafila said: "My opinion is that yes, there passed 10-12 days since the reopening of schools and I had said previously that we needed to see what happened in 12-14 days. And what we see so far is a large number of cases. On Sunday we had a record for a Sunday, on Saturday we had a record for a Saturday, today we have an absolute record. We are now waiting to see if the situation stabilizes in the following days and we reach the famous plateau, or the growth will continue."

In his opinion, the number of people admitted to ICUs will increase "for sure."

The SRM head also said that Romania is "in a club" of countries that have over 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, in terms of cumulative incidence.

"But I hope that we'll contradict the expectations of the European Centre for Disease Control, which issued a warning last week, and that people who become infected in Romania are less from the vulnerable categories so that we can have a health system able to take over the cases that need to be treated, and that the pressure will be manageable and not greater than the system's power of absorption," said Rafila.

He mentioned that, according to a European index, Romania is next to Bulgaria on the last spots of the ranking in terms of health system performance.

"Sure, if we take various rankings - a European index that is published every year on the performance of the health system - indeed, we are there side by side with Bulgaria on the last spots of the ranking in the EU, but it is not totally unexpected, because we also have the lowest amount, both in terms of percentage and in terms of the actual amount allocated to the health system. So given how much money is allocated to the health system, we're faring pretty well, it depends on how you look at things," said Alexandru Rafila. AGERPRES (RO-author: Roberto Stan, editor: Antonia Nita, EN - author: Cristina Zaharia, editor: Adina Panaitescu)