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State of alert to be most likely extended
Chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Prime Minister Ludovic Orban, announced on Monday that the state of alert will most likely be extended.
"Any decision will take into account the epidemiological context. Based on the data we have to date, if there are no improvements, significant decreases [in the number of SARS-COV-2 infections, ed.n.], we will most likely extend the alert," Orban said at the PNL headquarters.
He specified that the requests regarding the continuation of some activities during this period will be analyzed.
"We will take into account the point of view of the specialists from the Technical and Scientific Support Group, from the Anti-COVID Committee, from INSP [the National Institute of Public Health] and, depending on the evaluations we will have, we will make the political decisions," the prime minister explained.
According to him, no other restrictive measures are being considered. "We do not want to impose any other restrictions. In fact, two more measures have been taken: limiting the working hours of terraces and mandatory mask-wearing in crowded spaces where ensuring the physical distance of protection is not possible. These are the only restrictive measures and they do not affect the carrying out of economic activities, because our objective is not to affect the economy in any way through the measures we take," Orban underlined.
He indicated that another solution for terraces is being considered if things improve.
The PM added that there should be no problem with organizing the ballot, provided that all candidates, campaigners and citizens respect the health protection rules. "Once the campaign and voting rules to minimize the virus spread risk are adopted, there is no problem with holding the elections. Note that Poland, for example, has held presidential elections, there have been parliamentary elections in Croatia. There are countries that organized elections and where this did not result in a higher number of infections, provided that all candidates, all party campaigners and the citizens in general comply with health protection rules," Orban said.
According to him, the daily coronavirus caseload registered in the last two weeks allows the organisation of local elections.
"If we look at developments in the last two weeks, we can see that we have managed to stop the growth. This is quite important. There is an extremely small rise in the number of cases, and looking at the numbers by weeks, we can see that there is a clear limitation of the virus spread. Of course, whatever measure the government would take, no matter how many fines we would hand down, no matter how many decisions on the organization of various activity types we would take, we need the collaboration of the people. The more Romanians respect the rules, the lesser the virus spread risk. From my point of view, at the daily caseload in the past 2 weeks, the elections can be organized," Orban said at the PNL headquarters, when asked if the local elections slated for September 27 can be held under the current conditions.