BUCHAREST, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Romania on Sunday announced 131 new COVID-19-related deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the country's total number of coronavirus deaths since the outbreak of the epidemic to 10,047.
Of the new fatalities, 119 are people over 60 years old, and 125 are patients with comorbidities, according to the Strategic Communication Group (GCS), the country's official COVID-19 communication task force.
The cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases stands at 418,645 in the nation of some 19 million people, up 5,837 from the previous day, the GCS noted.
A total of 295,148 people were declared cured, while 13,492 people with COVID-19 are hospitalized in the specialized health units, out of whom 1,174 are in intensive care.
Meanwhile, 47,525 people confirmed with the new coronavirus infection are in isolation at home while 12,587 are in institutional isolation.
To date, 3,898,743 tests have been processed at the national level. Of these, 20,790 were performed in the last 24 hours -- 13,258 were based on the case definition and medical protocol, and 7,532 on request, the GCS said.
With a total of 58,405 cases, Bucharest, the capital, is currently the administrative district with the highest number of infections in the country, while Sibiu County in central Romania has the highest infection rate, 8.62 per thousand inhabitants.
More and more cities and localities have recently implemented 14-day lockdown measures due to the high infection rate.
The Romanian authorities have imposed a one-month curfew throughout the country starting from Nov. 9. Residents are not allowed to leave their homes from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. without special circumstances.
Meanwhile, the government has also introduced a series of new preventive and control measures, including expanding mandatory mask-wearing from indoor public spaces only to all public places.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), face masks should be used as part of a comprehensive strategy of measures to suppress COVID-19 transmission and save lives.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreaks, wearing masks in public has been widely accepted in Asian countries like China, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam to limit the spread of COVID-19.
"Until the advent of the COVID vaccine and its widespread use across the country, only compliance with health regulations and restrictive measures is effective in limiting the spread of the virus," President Klaus Iohannis stressed on Sunday after visiting a hospital in Bucharest. Enditem
