Covid-19 in Bulgaria: 58-year-old is 29th to die
A 58-year-old man who had tested positive for Covid-19 died in hospital in the southern Bulgarian town of Haskovo on the morning of April 12, bringing the country’s death toll linked to the illness to 29.
The death was reported by Bulgaria’s Health Ministry a few hours after the regular morning briefing, at which it was announced that number of people who had tested positive for Covid-19 was now 669.
The 58-year-old had been admitted to the Haskovo hospital’s infectious diseases ward on April 4, and had tested positive for Covid-19 the following day.
He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, asthma and hypertension. He was transferred to intensive care on April 9 with pneumonia and breathing difficulties, and was placed on ventilation, the Health Ministry said
At its 8am briefing, the national operational headquarters said that to date, 68 people had been discharged from hospital after recovering from Covid-19.
There were 230 people in hospital, 35 of them in intensive care, the operational HQ said.
As of April 12, an order by Health Minister Kiril Ananiev comes into effect, obliging people to wear protective masks or another suitable face covering when outdoors. The order remains in effect until April 26 inclusive.
A separate order by Ananiev, issued on the night of April 11, closed all fruit and vegetable and flower markets on Sunday.
The
markets may re-open from April 13 to 15 so that sellers may clear
their stocks, after which they must close again until further
notice.
.
Bulgarian media reports on Sunday morning said that
some sellers had arrived at markets ready to sell their wares, having
not heard about Ananiev’s order.
The order was issued after people crowded markets on Saturday and market managers failed to implement regulations about physical distancing and wearing of protective masks by sellers and customers.
In the Bulgarian Orthodox Church calendar, April 12 2020 is Palm Sunday – known in Bulgarian as Tsvetnitsa or Vurbnitsa, a day on which many Bulgarians with “flower names” such as Rosa, Violeta and many others celebrate their “name day”. This tradition had increased demand at flower markets.
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has kept its houses of worship open, while the Sunday morning service was streamed online and shown on the public broadcaster.
For Bulgaria’s Roman Catholic and Protestant minorities, April 12 is Easter Sunday. These denominations streamed their services online, without the public present in the churches.
April 12 also saw the scheduled start of large-scale testing of a percentage of residents of Bansko, intended to establish whether immunity had developed in the mountain resort town, which had been under two-week quarantine because of several cases of Covid-19.
(Photo: Haskovo multi-profile hospital)
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