Bulgaria’s deputy agriculture minister tests positive for Covid-19
One of Bulgaria’s deputy agriculture ministers has tested positive for Covid-19, Agriculture Minister Dessislava Taneva confirmed in a television interview on June 9.
There are four deputy agriculture ministers. The identity of the one who has the virus has not been officially disclosed.
Taneva said that the deputy minister was in a good condition.
The Agriculture Ministry has gone over to working remotely and within two to three days, everyone who was in contact with the deputy minister will be tested.
Taneva said that she had been tested on June 8 and the results would be known on Tuesday. She is in mandatory quarantine.
The Agriculture and Food Ministry headquarters in Sofia is being disinfected.
This was the second case of infection at the ministry. The first was at the beginning of the epidemic, when everyone was working remotely and thus no special measures had to be taken, Taneva said.
Taneva held a news conference on Monday after it emerged she had told vegetable growers during a video conference: “What I suggest is that we stick to the position that there is no fraud and everything is in perfect order because otherwise they (the EU) will stop it (funding). After all, we did what the [vegetable] sector has wanted.
“But to boast about what fraudsters we are! Tomorrow they will come and say to us that we are not going to get this support any longer.” Taneva held the news conference to deny wrongdoing and to say that the emergence of the recording was a political attack.
The news conference had been held in a hall on the building’s ground floor and so none of the journalists was a contact person, Taneva said.
(Photo of the Agriculture Ministry building in Sofia: © Plamen Agov • studiolemontree.com)
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