Bulgaria’s Health Minister: Covid-19 epidemic declaration will not be extended
For the time being, Bulgaria’s Covid-19 epidemic declaration will not be extended, Health Minister Kiril Ananiev said in a radio interview on June 20.
A State of Emergency was in place in Bulgaria from March 13 to May 13 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was succeeded an epidemic declaration, initially due to expire on June 14 but which was extended to June 30.
Ananiev said that the fact that the epidemic declaration would not extended “doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow basic anti-epidemic rules, such as social distance and disinfection”.
“We
have managed, with the measures we have taken before everyone else,
to keep morbidity low,” Ananiev said.
He acknowledged that there was an upward trend in the number of cases, but said that it was controllable and the outbreaks were happening in clusters, not across the board.
On June 20, the Health Ministry cited national information system figures as showing that of the 2371 samples examined in the past 24 hours, 81 had tested positive.
The largest number was in the city of Sofia, 28.
A total of 3755 cases of new coronavirus have been confirmed in Bulgaria, of which 1554 are active. The number of active cases has risen by 11 in the past 24 hours.
A total of 2008 people have recovered, 67 in the past 24 hours.
There are 314 patients in hospital, 17 of them in intensive care.
The number of medical personnel who have tested positive has increased to 341, with eight new cases in the past 24 hours.
The number of deaths has risen by three to 193, with the deaths in the past 24 hours of a 61-year-old man with pneumonia, an 80-year-old man with pneumonia and an 87-year-old man with pneumonia and chronic lung disease.
For the rest of The Sofia Globe’s continuing coverage of the Covid-19 situation, please click here.
Section supported by the Embassy of Switzerland
