Romania is still on a descending slope in regards with the number of new COVID cases, the declining pace continues, nonetheless it has slowed down somewhat, Dr. Florentina Furtunescu, director with the National Institute of Public Health (INSP), said on Thursday.

"In respect to the developments in the daily average number of cases and deaths, we find we are still on a descending slope, with round 800 new cases and about 60 deaths, as a daily average. As of 12 December, there were 1,793,643 cases registered and over 57,700 deaths, 17 percent of the cases and almost 9 percent of the deaths were registered in Bucharest, where 10 percent of the country population lives. We find that fatality in Bucharest is still more reduced than in the rest of the counties which accumulated cases and deaths. In comparison with the previous weeks, namely weeks 48 and 47, we find a continuation of the descending pace, nonetheless this pace has slowed down somewhat, both in terms of number of cases and in terms of number of deaths," Florentina Furtunescu told a press conference.

The doctor added that there is an increase in the number of tests carried out, from over 192,000 the previous week to 252,000 in the week between December 6 and 12, both in the number of PCR tests and in that of rapid tests.

"The rate of positive COVID tests went down from 4 percent to 2.5 percent in the previous week. It is a natural decrease, explicable mainly through the increase in the number of testing, increase that we, from the public health perspective, can only be happy about. (...) In respect to the reproduction rate - how many new cases are generated by one case - we find a slight increase, from 0.68 percent in the previous week to 0.87 percent, an increase in line with the slowdown of the descending pace," Dr. Furtunescu showed.

Regarding the Omicron strain and the new public health threats, the INSP director informed that 95 sequencing analyses were performed in the previous week in Romania. Before December 15, there were 11 situations with the Omicron variant, out of which 10 cases with clearly imported etiology, Florentina Furtunescu also pointed out, reiterating that vaccination remains essential in this period for everyone, in order to avoid serious forms of the illness, hospitalisation or death. AGERPRES (RO - author: Catalina Matei, editor: Florin Marin; EN - editor: Adina Panaitescu)