As ambulances carrying coronavirus patients queue outside Romania’s emergency units, hospitals are running out of beds, morgues are overflowing and doctors are becoming exasperated as well as exhausted. Most of the sick are unvaccinated, medics say. Some die waiting to be seen.
“The situation is critical,” Radu Tincu, an intensive care specialist at Floreasca hospital in Bucharest, Romania’s largest emergency facility, told the Financial Times. “We’re frustrated . . . They refuse to be vaccinated,” he said. “[Even after] we tell them of the risk of severe Covid, they still refuse.”
Romania is at the heart of a relentless wave of Covid-19 sweeping across eastern Europe and the Balkans that threatens to overwhelm health services. The country’s daily toll of 19 deaths per million as of October 20 is the highest in the world, just ahead of neighboring Bulgaria and Moldova. Romania’s death rate is higher than at any point during the pandemic.
Eastern and Central Europe along with Russia account for the world’s 12 highest Covid-19 death rates. The figures contrast starkly with western Europe, where death rates are about a tenth of those in the east and stand at less than one per million in several countries.
Infections have also soared to unprecedented levels, particularly in the Baltic states. Latvia’s 115 daily new cases per 100,000 people are 30 times higher than Spain’s, and Lithuania’s rate of 94 is 24 times higher.
Health experts say widespread mistrust of government and officials dating back to the Soviet era, and resulting vaccine hesitancy and unwillingness to