Since 27th of December, 2020, the COVID-19 vaccine campaign has started in Romania. Of course, the vaccine came with numerous rumors, such as the one which states that the vaccine can cause infertility in women. These rumors caused a low rate of immunization in many countries across the world, including in Europe. the country that has the second lowest vaccination rate in the European Union the moment is Romania, with only 33% of the population being vaccinated.
The vaccination campaign was firstly announced as a three-phased process: the vaccination of the medical personnel, then the immunization of the population at risk, and lastly, the vaccination of the rest of the population.
The former PNL Prime Minister, Florin Cîțu set a target to have aproximatively 70% of the population vaccinated by the end of September 2021; this goal ended up with Romania selling the almost-expired vaccines to other countries (Denmark, Ireland and South Korea).
Unfortunately, the weak vaccine-education in Romania led to the Covid-19 cases rate to skyrocket, as well as the death rate caused by the virus. In October 2020, people started dying more and more, hospitals were full, and people who were sick could not get proper treatment. One of the youngest person that has died due to complications caused by the Covid-19 was registered to be around only 40 years old. A WHO study shows that “in Romania, from 3 January 2020 to 4:08pm CET, 9 December 2021, there have been 1,789,539 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 57,360 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 4 December 2021, a total of 14,311,013 vaccine doses have been administered”.
But what was more “impressing” was the government's campaign to promote vaccination and all the useless attempts to convince people to get vaccinated. Romania had one of the most original campaigns: “the vaccination lottery”, where you could win big prizes, free beer and food, and also 100 Romanian lei coupons. It was truly an “amazing” marketing strategy. But still, the vaccination rate dropped, causing Romania to have one of the lowest vaccination rates not only in the EU, but in the world. The government tried to “buy” the citizen`s trust in the vaccine, but didn't actually think that if specialists in medicine talked more about the vaccine, and not politicians, maybe it could have been more convincing and maybe the vaccination rate would have been higher.
Furthermore, a lot of articles containing fake news about the pandemic and vaccination are getting published on social media, causing people to get confused and not to trust the officials, or maybe to not know who to trust anymore. Also, people don't actually know how to select the right information from fake news. The truth is that some kids are taught in school how to tell the difference between real news and fake news, but what should the elders do? Most of them don't even have the motivation to get out of the house.
In February 2021, Romania was actually the seventh in the world regarding the vaccination rate, before Denmark, Poland, Island, and even before Switzerland, Spain, France and Germany. But what happened? Why from seventh in the world, Romania now is one of the countries with the lowest vaccination rate? The main issue probably is that the citizens don't trust the government, that maybe it hasn't done enough to gain the people's trust. This problem has plenty of solutions, kinda hard to implement in these hard times, but one day, maybe Romania will be a better country, and maybe an example for other countries regarding how the government handles the citizens.
Teodora Kovács & Mihaela Răduț
22.12.2021
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