Covid-19 death toll tops 20,000 in Romania

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Bucharest, Feb 24 (IANS) The number of coronavirus-related fatalities in Romania reached 20,013 on Tuesday after a further 119 patients died in the past 24 hours, the latest official data showed.

The cumulative number of confirmed Covid-19 cases stands at 784,711 in the nation of some 19 million people, up 3,382 from the previous day, according to the Strategic Communication Group (GCS), Romania's official Covid-19 communication task force, the Xinhua news agency reported.

As many as 728,252 patients in Romania have recovered from the virus, GCS data showed.

In the last 24 hours, 23,599 RT-PCR tests and 9,381 rapid antigenic tests were performed at the national level, according to the GCS. So far, 5,904,761 RT-PCR tests and 262,823 rapid antigenic tests have been processed since the pandemic broke out last February in the eastern European country.

The pandemic situation in Romania has eased since the beginning of 2021, with the daily average new infections dropping from the highest peak of some 7,800 in November last year to about 2,400 in February. However, the one-month curfew that the authorities started on Nov. 9 has been extended and is still in effect.

The authorities hope to further alleviate the pandemic by stepping up its vaccination campaign that started on Dec. 27, 2020. So far, 848,790 people have been vaccinated. Currently, Romania is using three vaccines for vaccination -- Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Globally, 255 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 73 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the US, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Tuesday.

--IANS

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