Bulgaria: Covid-19 patients discharged from hospital may have quarantine lifted earlier
Covid-19 patients discharged from hospital after treatment may have their quarantine lifted earlier if they have two negative PCR tests over two consecutive days, according to an order issued by Bulgaria’s Health Minister Kostadin Angelov.
The sampling must be done by a laboratory team at the home of the quarantined person.
According to the March 25 daily report by Bulgaria’s national information system, there are 9125 Covid-19 patients in hospital and 62 713 people in quarantine.
Another exemption from quarantine is provided for Bulgarian citizens arriving from abroad, except from African countries, if they have a negative PCR test 24 hours after arriving in Bulgaria.
Those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 are not exempt from the rules regarding quarantine.
Bulgarian National Television reported the Health Ministry as saying that there were still no accumulated data that those who have been vaccinated cannot be asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19.
In other news regarding Covid-19 on March 25:
Health Minister Angelov issued an order setting up an expert advisory council on issues related to pregnant women and Covid-19.
Headed by Professor Assen Nikolov, the council has 10 members, including proven Bulgarian specialists in obstetrics, gynaecology and neonatology, the Health Ministry said.
The tasks of the council including studying good national, European and world practices, to periodically discuss the new achievements of medical science and practice in medical care for pregnant women and parturients, including in the context of Covid-19 and in view of the dynamics of prevalence and specificity of the development of the infectious disease.
Its other tasks include expressing opinions requested by medical institutions about the necessary medical care of pregnant women and mothers, with suspected or confirmed Covid-19 in complicated cases that require special expertise, the ministry said.
Sofia municipality said on March 25 that the Sofia operational HQ had decided on increased inspections and control regarding anti-epidemic measures at food chains, retail outlets, open-air markets and on public transport.
The number of teams checking that people on public transport are wearing protective masks is being stepped up, the statement said.
The heads of of the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth hospitals reported that the hospitals had increased their capacity with new beds as ordered by the Minister of Health, and currently had the necessary medicines, protective clothing and disinfectants.
The European Commission published on March 25 new reports by Twitter, TikTok, Google, and Microsoft on measures they took in February 2021 against vaccine disinformation as signatories of the Code of Practice on Disinformation.
Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for Internal Market, said: “Vaccination is our utmost priority for Europeans. Fighting disinformation on Covid-19 vaccines is essential to complement our production and vaccination efforts.
“Safe and efficient vaccines are being produced and administered in Europe and we cannot let disinformation undermine trust. Platforms have a responsibility in this regard and they have to live up to this responsibility,” Breton said.
The Commission said that the reports show that Twitter updated its Covid-19 search prompts in the EU to include authoritative information on vaccines, and activated the hashtag #Vaccinated ✌ in 24 languages for users to show their support for vaccination.
TikTok launched a new feature placing a banner across videos warning users they may contain unverified content and prompting a message before they share the flagged video.
Google’s Search feature, showing reliable information on vaccines and statistics in response to related searches, is now active in all 27 EU countries and YouTube removed 30 000 videos that included claims contradicting consensus among health authorities.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine deployed a new feature showing countries’ vaccination progress, and the Bing Covid-19 experience had more than 2 300 000 visits.
The Commission said that it is in continuous contact with the platforms to further address the large amount of vaccine disinformation that keeps circulating online and fine-tune the monitoring process, including on the impact of the signatories policies also to ensure sufficient transparency and public accountability.
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