Did politician Dan Barna say, in a 2021 interview, that Romanians who did not follow COVID-19 restrictions would soon be locked out of their homes? No, that's not true: Barna, who back then was serving as Romania's deputy prime minister, was referring to bar and restaurant owners who were not following restrictions for public indoor spaces, and said they would soon face harsher measures, such as temporary business closure.
The claim originated from a video (archived here), posted on TikTok on April 21, 2023, under the title "How many doses do you think these 2 had?". It opened:
Share, everyone should know Romania's Kim Jong Un for his claims during the Pandemic: "those who don't respect our rules should have a lock put on their door".
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Apr 27 07:52:14 2023 UTC)
In this interview from March 2021, deputy prime minister Dan Barna explained why the law will enable harsher measures for business owners who were still hosting parties, or were not asking their clients to socially distance and wear masks indoors.
Several bars in Bucharest were being fined by the Police at that time for breaching these measures that were meant to limit the spread of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. Barna was saying that these fines were not enough, and that a new ordinance will "state very clearly that the moment you're caught not respecting the rules you'll have a lock put on your door", referring to public spaces. This ordinance added a new article to the law in April 2021, stating that businesses (restaurants, bars, clubs) that repeatedly breached COVID-19 measures will risk being shut down for 15 or 30 days.
