Covid-19: Bulgaria in second place in mortality rate in EU-EEA
Bulgaria is in second place in the European Union-European Economic Area in terms of mortality from Covid-19, on a 14-day basis, a Health Ministry briefing on December 10 was told.
In terms of mortality, Bulgaria has an indicator of 27.5 per 100 000 population, on a 14-day basis, National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Disease head Professor Todor Kantardzhiev said.
Also on a 14-day basis, the morbidity rate of Bulgaria is 553 per 100 000 population, putting it in ninth place among EU-EEA countries.
“There is a weak, fragile trend in the past 10 days for the total number of cases to come down,” Kantardzhiev said. “This should in no way reduce our vigilance and turn things in the opposite direction.”
As Bulgaria’s government has done recently, Health Minister Kostadin Angelov chose to emphasise the number of people counted as having recovered from the virus.
Angelov said that in the past seven days, 16 872 people had recovered from the virus, with a total of 11 405 in the past four days.
He said that these figures made “an extremely good impression” because they lent hope in a battle that was putting pressure on Bulgaria’s health care system.
Among medical personnel, there are currently 3590 active cases, of which 3362 are undergoing home treatment, 228 are in hospitals, with 27 in intensive care.
The occupancy rate in hospitals of beds for Covid-19 patients not requiring intensive care treatment is 52 per cent. The occupancy rate of intensive care beds is 42 per cent.
The bed occupancy rate is highest in the district of Yambol, at 98 per cent, followed by Shoumen, where it is 85 per cent, but decreasing, the briefing was told.
Angelov said that a decision on re-opening kindergartens would be made by the end of the week. Currently, the data did not suggest this would be possible, he said.
“The morbidity reduction curve is so fragile that it is too early to draw any conclusions about success. We have 10 days left until December 21, in which we must together achieve the success we are talking about in the introduction of the measures,” Angelov said.
December 21 is the date that the current stricter measures that came into effect on November 27 are due to expire.
He said that a Health Ministry team was working with representatives of vaccine companies to provide information about the vaccines, with the goal of conducting a large-scale information campaign to acquaint Bulgarian citizens with the benefits of vaccination.
The head of the Medicines Agency, Bogdan Kirilov, said that Bulgaria’s accession to the agreement between the European Commission and the vaccine manufacturers guaranteed access to the agreed quantities of vaccines.
Angelov dismissed as baseless the claims that the vaccines had been created very quickly and posed risks to human health and life.
The Sofia Globe’s coverage of the Covid-19 situation in Bulgaria is supported by the Embassies of Switzerland and Finland.
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