Why did Bulgaria and Romania fail in the fight against the pandemic?

The two Balkan nations have the lowest vaccination rates in the European Union and the pandemic situation there is again out of control, writes Cristian Gherasim.

Bulgaria has the second highest Covid-19 deaths in the last month in the EU and the country ranks last in vaccination - only 21% of Bulgarians are fully vaccinated against the virus. It is the least vaccinated country in the EU. Like in Romania more than 90% of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 are not vaccinated. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported that just 25.5% of Bulgaria's adults are fully vaccinated, lower that Romania’s 37.2%. This is well below the EU average of 75%.

This is also because a significant number of healthcare specialists have advised people with chronic illnesses not to get vaccinated, while in Western Europe these people were actually the ones getting vaccinated first. For example, renowned Bulgarian infectious disease expert Atanas Mangarov downplayed the importance of the virus since the beginning of the pandemic and spoke out against vaccines, creating a climate of mistrust. Mangarov, head of the Covid-19 care unit at a Sofia hospital, insists mask-wearing and vaccines aren't necessary and promots herbal teas as a treatment.

According to the Bulgarian Medical Union, about 70% of Bulgarian doctors are vaccinated, one of the lowest percentages in the EU.

Even some doctors, members of several councils, appointed there by the Minister of Health, have drafted recommendations in direct contradiction with those given by international professional associations. For example, they recommended that pregnant women or those who were planning a pregnancy not be vaccinated for the next six months.

Romania, the hardest hit country in the EU, has been losing every day to COVID about 500 of its citizens, making it the worst hit country in Europe by this new pandemic wave and amongst the most impacted nations worldwide. COVID 19 has been killing one Romanian every five minutes, according to reports of the government run vaccination committee. Romania has recorded this week its highest number of COVID deaths since the pandemic started. With close to 600 dead in just 24 hours, the south-eastern European nation has the highest mortality rate in the entire European Union.

The 4^th wave of the pandemic is the country’s deadliest by far because Romania has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the EU. Romania was the first in the EU to lift restrictions and relax other measures, but next-to-last in terms of vaccination rates.

The macabre scenes from past days with town halls across the country using excavators to dig burial plots for recently COVID deceased, as cemeteries and undertakers can no longer cope with the large number of dead, led to a surge in the number of those wanting to vaccinate.

This dramatic trend with no end in sight led opinion leaders in Romania to show how the pandemic stacks up against other catastrophic events in the country’s history, highlighting the scale of the COVID disaster. Nothing even comes close to the almost 50.000 people dead because of COVID in the last 18 months in Romania.

One of the most recent tragedies the country faced was the Collective nightclub fire in 2015 which killed 64 people. The COVID death toll in Romania pales in comparison to the number of casualties of the 1989 anti-communist revolution, when 1,166 Romanians died, or to the deadly 1977 earthquake which killed 1,570 people.

Raed Arafat, the head of the country’s emergency unit said that a comparison between the current situation in Romania and that in the Italian region of Lombardy is by no means exaggerated and admits that the situation is very serious.

Hospital, healthcare workers and ICUs across the country are overwhelmed. Healthcare specialists warned weeks in advance that the 4^th wave will hit Romania hard.

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