Pandemic: Corona pandemic out of control: senseless dying in Romania

The delta variant brings the health system in Romania to its knees. Experts despair of their compatriots, among whom a majority rejects the corona vaccination.

The sick lie on the floor of the emergency room of the Floreasca Clinic in the center of Bucharest next to those for whom a free bed was found. Devices sound the alarm continuously while doctors and nurses rush from one patient to another. The warning signals come together in the shrill of a never-ending emergency.

The German intensive care doctor Florent Josse from the Bundeswehr Hospital in Ulm has only one word for what he saw on his first visit to a Bucharest hospital: hell. “Patients with oxygen masks next to intubates have to see what will happen to them in a few days,” says the doctor. Anyone who is artificially ventilated should actually have to go to the intensive care unit. But it is as full in the Floreasca Hospital as in the other Bucharest clinics. There is only room for the terminally ill in the ambulance. The doctor speaks of a death sentence for the patient in view of the lack of possibility of adequate intensive treatment.

Romania can no longer treat all corona patients

The Bundeswehr doctor flew to Bucharest with three colleagues at the end of October to transfer patients from the overcrowded clinics in the Romanian capital to Germany for intensive treatment at the beginning of November. Germany and other EU countries responded to the call for help from a country that can no longer care for its Covid patients. The four-person team of armed forces should select corona patients who have converted a transport with a to the flying intensive care unit Airbus could survive to Germany.

In a few days, the doctors examined 400 patients in Bucharest clinics and compiled a list. “We selected patients for the flight the day before, because the patient’s condition was so dynamic and the patients can die every day,” says Josse. The Bundeswehr doctors have now flown 18 Romanians out of Bucharest in their Airbus. They continue to fight for survival in the Bundeswehr hospital in Koblenz and other clinics in Germany, among other places.

It was in mid-October when reporters from the investigative portal Recorder captured the end times mood in the University Hospital of Bucharest in a 16-minute video. They showed how nurses in protective suits pushed the dead in black body bags past the dying in fully occupied corridors. Patients were given their oxygen masks while sitting in chairs because there were no beds. Doctors and nurses moved between sick people who all urgently needed their help and at the same time. The ambulances with patients for whom there was nowhere more space were jammed in front of the clinic. According to medical staff, all of the patients were unvaccinated.

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Hundreds of people die from the coronavirus every day in Romania

The fight against the virus has been going on for many weeks. “The clinics cannot handle more than 6,000 corona patients. The health system began to collapse as early as September, when the incidence was 350 to 400 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The government didn’t even react seriously when the incidence was 750, ”Jurma says. The number of infections found in the country with around 19 million inhabitants is now 15,000 a day. Hundreds die from the virus every day. Measured by its population, the country has the highest corona death rate in the world.

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Political expert Cristian Pîrvulescu gave a television interview on the first evening of the nocturnal curfew imposed on unvaccinated people at the end of October. With his Covid vaccination certificate in his pocket, he drove home after 10 p.m. He did not see police monitoring compliance with the new rule. In any case, corona deniers and supporters of conspiracy theories are particularly well represented in the Romanian security apparatus. “They are not expected to enforce the curfew,” says Pîrvulescu.

He accuses fundamentalists within the Orthodox churches as well as evangelicals who have been evangelicals with increasing success in the recent past, vaccinating against the Coronavirus to have vilified in Romania in the summer. The ruling party PNL, like the Social Democrats, relies on religious voters and both parties have therefore only half-heartedly committed themselves to the vaccination campaign, says the expert. The fear of the new right-wing populist party AUR sits on their necks. It combines anti-Western nationalism with a religious image of society. AUR vehemently opposes all requirements in the corona crisis and the vaccination campaign. The party moved into the Romanian parliament in the last elections in December 2020 and could triumph in new elections, says Privulescu.

The church is still very influential in society

Unlike in Western Europe, the attitude of the churches in Romania is still decisive for the actions of the people, he says. And these are more fundamentalist oriented in Romania than anywhere else in the ME, he adds. The dominance of literal interpretations of the Bible leaves traces in the minds of Romanians. “In 2009 over 40 percent of those questioned said in a survey that the sun revolves around the earth and today almost 70 percent of Romanians believe in the devil,” says the political expert. “Those who are convinced of the existence of the devil are often open to conspiracy theories,” says Pîrvulescu. The number of Romanians who believe in the Prince of Darkness is roughly the same as the number of people who refuse to be vaccinated in the country.

Clinic doctors in the northern Romanian city of Iasi reported at the end of October of patients whose corona symptoms worsened surprisingly quickly and made suspicions about a more aggressive Romanian corona variant. The avoidable catastrophe is far from over.

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