Moldova remains in an emergency state in public health for another 45 days. Authorities were expected to announce more drastic decisions, given that more and more people get infected with COVID-19. Many of them go through severe forms, some do not recover and die, and the number of deaths among medical workers has also increased.

The decision to establish a state of emergency in public health, however, is tardy and useless, given that since last week’s restrictions nothing has changed in the public space. Overcrowded public transport, citizens walking without reserve through public spaces, shops decorated their Christmas trees and attract buyers with products of poor quality and sell them at deceivingly low prices both in villages and in Chișinău. COVID-19 suspects move around the city and stand in queues to get tested for the new coronavirus. On their way to a laboratory and back home, suspects come in contact with dozens of people who risk becoming new victims of COVID-19 the following days. Wherefrom has the Public Health Commission taken this poor advice to apply the emergency in this way? 

In the run-up to the presidential election, despite the high number of sick and dead people, the authorities continued the election campaign, ignoring the warnings that the pandemic was evolving from bad to worse.

After the elections, they hesitated a bit and decided to introduce the emergency state. It is rather a psychological move to scare people. Nobody seems to respect the last-week Government’s restrictions because no one trusts a government that does not respect its own decisions. We should remember here about the wedding of the Prime Minister’s son or the electoral and post-electoral incumbent president’s parties. 

These governmental decisions, lined up on about ten pages, are of no use to the citizens, for whom the pandemic means poverty, fear, disease, death.

It has not been the authorities’ first time to announce that restaurants, nightclubs, golf courts, or swimming pools are closing. Who is this information for, anyway? It is useless for the people who live in the villages, where the pandemic came a little later.

Rather than write dozens of stupid provisions in government decisions, they’d better set the procedure for collecting tests from suspects in villages who, getting sick, are forced to travel to Chișinău, endangering other people. They’d better supplement pharmacies with paracetamol, elemental vitamins, anticoagulants, that are so necessary for the treatment of COVID-19 than scare the people with the emergency alert. They’d better keep an eye on the prices in pharmacies, where some of the medicines’ prices have doubled in recent months.

They’d better remember their promise to test as many people as possible, to avoid the dizzying spread of the new coronavirus. They don’t promise it anymore, nor have they increased the number of tests performed daily, even though we reached the point when half of those tested are positive.

If they wanted to get involved in the fight against the pandemic, the Government would have to work, that is to test, to isolate, to treat, to protect the people in these difficult times. They seem to have chosen, however, the more convenient way and developed acts, decisions, provisions, which no one, not even them, will respect.