President of the Romanian Microbiologist Association Alexandru Rafila stated to news agency Agerpres on Wednesday that within two or three weeks, or even earlier, there will be at least 1,000 cases of coronavirus registered in Romania on a daily basis.
“If you have a large number of cases within a few days and many of them are complicated, it’s harder to treat them, and patients are in real danger. Now we’re talking about hundreds of new cases per day. Yesterday (Tuesday, March 24) we had over 200, today (Wednesday), almost 150. The more symptomatic people that we test … then surely the number of positive cases will also increase. I’m not sure which is more relevant: the total number of new cases or the number of elderly people who are infected and also suffer from other chronic diseases. Because these elderly are the ones who are most at risk and are very likely to be hospitalized in intensive care … Probably within two or three weeks, or maybe even earlier, we will reach a thousand cases per day,” said Rafila.
According to the expert, the world pandemic is going to last for about two years, until a vaccine is finally produced. However, a drug capable of treating any new types of coronavirus should appear by this summer, and then the number of serious cases and the number of deaths will start to decrease.
The microbiologist also thinks that social distancing measures in Romania will last until the number of both daily registered cases and serious cases start to decline. Right now, these numbers are still increasing, and it is critical to be able to provide proper treatment for the serious ones.
“Let’s not forget that a patient treated in ICU remains there for about three weeks,” said Rafila.
At the time of publishing, Romania had 1,292 confirmed cases, with 24 deceased and 263 cured.
Title image: President of the Romanian Microbiologist Association Alexandru Rafila (Photo: Inquam Photos / Octav Ganea)
