The persons will be able to enter enclosed commercial and service facilities, except for units retailing food products, hygiene products and medicines and for banks, nonbank lending organizations, post offices, insurance companies and currency exchange facilities, only if they have a COVID certificate (proof of vaccination, negative test or recovery). Such a proposal will be submitted by the Ministry of Health to the National Extraordinary Public Health Commission, IPN reports.

In a press briefing, Minister of Health Ala Nemerenco spoke about the high contagiousness of the Omicron variant that affects primarily children and noted that the country is on red alert. The Commission will be asked to impose nationwide restrictive measures corresponding to the red alert for a month. They will also suggest switching schools to online learning for an initial period of two weeks.

Moldova has got close to 400,000 cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. Over 3,000 new cases were reported on January 19, this being a record number for Moldova so far. The death toll from COVID-19 stands at 10,470.