Romania has reported a record level of new COVID-19 infections amid slow vaccination rates.
The number of positive daily coronavirus infections in the EU member state rose by 11,049, authorities said on Tuesday.
The health ministry confirmed that at least 208 people had also died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours.
Since the start of the pandemic, Romania has registered more than 1.2 million cases of the virus.
A low uptake of vaccines in some eastern EU nations risks overwhelming hospitals amid the surge of infections due to the more contagious delta variant.
Around 72% of adults in the European Union have been fully vaccinated, but just 33% of Romanian adults have so far been inoculated.
Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s health commissioner, said the “worrying gap” on vaccinations needs urgently addressing.
At Bucharest’s Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology, the ICU’s chief doctor, Genoveva Cadar, says its beds are now at 100% capacity and around 98% of all its virus patients are unvaccinated.
Government data shows that 91.5% of COVID-19 deaths in Romania between September 18 and September 23 were people who had not been vaccinated.
The vice president of Romania’s national vaccination committee, Andrei Baciu, said that fake news has been a key factor in keeping people from getting jabbed.
“We are working with a team of specialists to combat misinformation,” he said.
