Administrative framework to be worked out to allow restrictions

Health Minister Nelu Tataru said on Wednesday evening that the government will make a series of decisions on Thursday that will create the administrative framework to allow for certain restrictions to be imposed during the state of alert.

"Today and tomorrow we are still in a state of emergency; tomorrow we have a government meeting and we will also have a meeting of National Committee on Emergency Situations and we will make some decisions that we hope will create and the administrative framework under which we can impose the restrictions," Tataru told Realitatea Plus private broadcaster.

He said that everyone should understand that any measure of relaxation, no matter how small, can increase the risk of intra-community transmission of the novel coronavirus, so easing measures should be introduced gradually.

"The public has been understanding so far and I want to thank them for this. We hope that they will continue to understand that these measures of relaxation must be entered progressively. By entering progressively we can manage them, we can pay attention to each of them. Conditions have been also adopted for countermeasures, and once again, coming up too early with some easing measures, we only exacerbate that risk of creating a community transmission and we can see such risks at this moment in other European countries (...) We are on a downward slope since the beginning of this pandemic and let's keep the slope downward. Relaxation must be viewed with more caution than on Easter holidays or the weekend of May 1-3 (...) we will continue to advocate for more periods of relaxation, but those periods are very much related to the result of the first period (...) We, and also the National Institute of Public Health and the National Centre for Communicable Disease Surveillance and Control will make daily assessments of the number of cases, the number of deaths, cases in intensive care, the number of cases of emergency room admissions, which will show us if outbreaks have occurred, if there is a strong transmission in the community and if we need to tighten or intervene with some measures that can control a possible growth," said Tataru.

He added that he recommends local administrations to reopen parks, but without access to playgrounds.

"Our recommendation was to open up the parks to those who want to walk for fresh air, to go outdoors, but keeping their distance anyway; gatherings should not be more than three people," he said.

About the mandate to wear masks during the state of alert in public spaces, Tataru mentioned that local administrations will have to provide these goods free of charge to people on a guaranteed minimum income, while the rest of the public will have to purchase them using their own resources, giving assurances that the masks will be available for sale in commercial spaces.