Coronavirus Chronicle in Moldova: No Quarantine to Be?

Marina DRAGALIN Countries around the world are getting back to tough measures aimed at containing the second COVID-19 wave. Despite the increasing rate of cases growth, the issue of national quarantine has not yet been raised in Moldova Recently, the second wave of coronavirus infection has struck the world. Thus, a new anti-record for the number of new cases was registered reaching 597.5 thousand. To date, almost 49 million people have been officially infected, 1.2 million people have died. The lack of significant progress in containing the pandemic encourage countries to better coordinate their actions. On this issue, a special session of the UN General Assembly is scheduled for early December. It is dedicated to the fight against coronavirus. The meeting will take place on December 3-4 at the level of heads of state and government. Particularly alarming indicators continue being registered in the European region: the rate of cases growth is high, so is the number of patients on artificial lung ventilation and of those who died from coronavirus effects. Almost all European countries where the number of coronavirus cases exceeded 11 million have returned to spring quarantine measures and are strengthening them in an attempt to contain the infection. Useless talking about any results yet. France, where the national quarantine has been in effect for several days, continues registering record high mortality and hospitalization rates for patients with COVID-19. It got to the point that France plans to send its patients to other countries, for example, to Germany, in order to at least slightly reduce the burden on the healthcare system and prevent it from collapsing. According to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the situation with coronavirus in winter will be more severe than it was in spring, as COVID-19 will behave more aggressively during the cold. At the same time, no one guarantees that severe restrictions on public life will not last in December. “We must politically do everything to limit this to November. We do our best, we do a lot. I don’t want to speculate about the future,” Merkel said. The Netherlands is being tightening lockdown: in particular, introducing a full quarantine with a curfew is being discussed. “Those who still think it's okay to have parties on Saturday nights with 100 or more people shouldn't be surprised if tough measures are taken against them,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned fellow citizens. We joined the "quarantine regiment" just as such countries as Lithuania, Poland, Austria and Romania, where the number of daily cases has approached 10 thousand. So far, to protect the economy, Italy refrains from a nationwide quarantine. However, the country's authorities still impose restrictions: the curfew at night, travel reduction between the most affected regions and where most shops and catering are to be closed. Three anti-records were set this week by Greece, in terms of the number of infected per day, deaths and those on mechanical ventilation. The chief epidemiologist of Greece, Sotiris Tsiodras, believes that the coronavirus pandemic can only be defeated with the arrival of a safe and effective vaccine, which can be expected by the end of 2020 - early 2021. “We hope our measures will work and stop feeding the virus. We have criteria to keep track of how the measures work. Restrictive measures will reduce the spread of the virus. I think that the pandemic will end only with the vaccine,” Tsiodras said. Academic and trade organizations that are researching vaccines in phase three trials prior to approval are showing good results, the scientist said. At the same time, there are alarming reports of coronavirus mutations that could potentially seriously complicate or even make the current vaccine development pointless. The severity of the situation is also emphasized by rather radical decisions of the authorities: for example, Denmark decided to cull the entire population of minks of more than 15 million species after the COVID-19 mutations were identified in them, which can be transmitted to humans. Moldova has endured for a couple of weeks at the level of more or less moderate indicators (especially compared to the beginning of October). However, the disease spreading rates has crept up again, and the number of new cases in recent days has again exceeded 1000 per day. In total, Moldova has 80 thousand confirmed cases of coronavirus, 1866 of which are deaths. As of today, the number of active cases is still at the level of about 18.5 thousand. Despite the registered increase in infection rates and warnings from experts that cold snaps may lead to a jump in the incidence, the Moldovan authorities do not publicly mention restrictive measures and quarantine. The only statements related to the pandemic aftermath elimination are Prime Minister Ion Chicu’s assurances regarding further subsidizing of economic agents affected by the pandemic. Obviously, the main attention during the next week will be directed first of all to the safest organization of the second round of the presidential elections (which cannot be postponed), after which quarantine measures can be partially reintroduced: however, a complete lockdown following the European countries’ example should not be expected.