The worrisome statistics recorded in Ștefan-Vodă town with 11 cases of COVID-19, in Carahasani village of Ștefan-Vodă district with nine confirmed cases and in Soroca town with 22 cases made the members of the Commission for Exceptional Situations take the decision to institute a quarantine regime in these regions. A large number of police officers and soldiers will be concentrated there and these will supervise the movement of persons, IPN reports, with reference to the Government’s press service.

Given the larger number of cases of local transmission and of Moldovans who returned home from other states that were seriously affected by the COVID-19 infection, the adopted restrictive measures will be maintained and actions will be taken to make sure that these are respected.

As many as 1,815 persons entered Moldova and 1,038 left it during the past 24 hours. A plane from Paris with 220 Moldovans aboard landed at the Chisinau International Airport at 9:30pm on March 31.

Prime Minister Ion Chicu requested to efficiently implement the new mechanism for repatriating Moldovan citizens from other states where the number of applicants is the highest, such as the UK, France, Russia, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Germany, and Belgium. Minister of Home Affairs Oleg Țulea said that airlines whose aircraft have greater passenger transportation capacities will be chosen.

A number of 280 samples were examined for COVID-19 on March 31 and 55 tested positive. Thirteen new cases of infection were confirmed in the municipality of Chisinau, 10 in Ștefan Vodă and nine in Soroca. Of the 55 infected persons, 48 contracted the virus locally, while seven persons returned infected to Moldova. The number of infections in Moldova rose to 353, with 22 persons of those infected being cured.