Romania's COVID-19 daily cases rise by 5,202 in last 24 hours, Health Minister Alexandru Rafila told a news conference on Monday.

"There are 5,202 cases reported in the last 24 hours. There is the same percentage of 20% of people who are re-infected in a time interval of more than 90 days. Regarding the degree of occupancy of hospital wards - beds allocated to infections with the novel coronavirus, it has reached 17.18%, and 263 people are hospitalised in intensive care, which is 14.69%. The increase is faster in the number of people hospitalised, a little slower in the cases in intensive care units, which rather indicates a lower severity of the circulating strains," said Rafila.

According to him, 4,158 patients are hospitalised in wards, including 633 minors.

As many as 263 patients are hospitalised in intensive care, including five minors.

"There are not very big increases in intensive care from last week. However, there is a major increase in the total number of cases in one week - 57,138 but the increase has slowed down substantially. (...) This week we have an increase from almost 45,000 to 57,000 cases. So it is an increase of about 23% as against 80% in the previous week," the minister said.

He added that in the last week, 149 deaths were reported in patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

"We expect this indicator to continue to increase. It is about 20 deaths recorded daily on average - 149 in seven days. So, about 20 deaths that are registered daily," the minister pointed out.

He mentioned that the positivity rate of the tests continued to increase, however, and there a "slowing down of the proportion." AGERPRES (RO - author: Roberto Stan, editor: Mihai Simionescu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)