IntMin Vela says a state of alert might follow next

Interior Minister Marcel Vela admitted on Wednesday that the state of emergency could be replaced after 15 May with a state of alert at national level.

He told a broadcast on Realitatea Plus private television station that the purpose of this demarche is to protect public health.

"Yes, a state of alert might follow next. Setting up the state of alert means that we could take over some of the decisions in the military ordinances through a decision of the National Committee for Special Emergency Situations. The state of alert is declared by the National Committee for Special Emergency Situations based on a meeting chaired by Romania's Prime Minister. The state of alert is established based on an existing emergency ordinance, which sets out the steps to be made. Somehow, it is below the level of the state of emergency, there are no military ordinances, certain rights are not limited, but they will be further managed to protect public health, also in the epidemic context, all the decisions, their implementation, their observance, the sanctioning of certain rules being breached, by the National Committee for Special Emergency Situations," Vela mentioned.

On the other hand, the Interior Minister was pleased with "the manner in which Romanians were responsible and acted in this period."

"As you can see, we are far enough from the Easter holidays to realize that we do not have a pandemic peak. This means that during the Holy Holidays, Romanians were responsible and also took care of their loved ones, and everyone got involved to protect their loved ones and themselves, so that now, after the Easter period, if we hadn't followed the rules, we would have had a peak of the pandemic, there would have been many cases, many people registered as positive and then, we would not have been able to discuss what to do in two and a half weeks, on 15 May. This thing isn't precisely due to the Interior Minister or the Government or the measures we have been criticised for and accused, the citizens have the main merit," Minister Vela added.