Prime Minister Florin Cîţu says that if Romanians get vaccinated, the country could return to normal starting the end of July. He ruled out a lockdown despite hospitals facing record number of patients. In Timișoara dozens of people gathered to protest an anti-corona measures demonstration during which xenophobic slogans were shouted. And a new IMF forecast predicts a whopping six percent economic growth for Romania this year.

This and more in this week’s Romanian Dispatch’s coverage of the past seven days. If you like it, why not pass it on? New readers can subscribe here.

Romanian Dispatch #27 (April 3 — 9, 2021)

The pace of the vaccination campaign is slowing. At the same time the ICU capacity is overstretched with corona patients. The nationalist AUR managed to mobilise people on the streets throughout Romania all week protesting against the COVID-19 measures. Yet the fact that a few hundred protestors showed up in the capital and elsewhere should not be interpreted as a sign that there is not sufficient support for the restrictions to get us out of the pandemic.

This and more in this week’s Romanian Dispatch’s coverage of the past seven days. If you like it, why not pass it on? New readers can subscribe here.

Romanian Dispatch #26 (March 27 — April 2, 2021)