Covid-19: As more districts in Bulgaria turn red, caretaker Health Minister says new measures not needed
With the Covid-19 morbidity rate in Bulgaria on August 27 close to the threshold for a red zone, caretaker Health Minister Stoicho Katsarov said that at the moment, no new measures were necessary.
“The number of patients is not so great. The infected are not so many. There is no drama in the situation, rest assured. If it is necessary to implement measures, they will be implemented. At the moment this is not necessary,” Katsarov said.
“The operational plan that we adopted plans the opening of extra beds. The opening of these beds is going according to it. In Sofia and in the country, nothing extraordinary needs to be done at the moment.”
In that plan, the threshold for the declaration of a red zone is an infection rate of 249.9 to 499.9 per 100 000 population.
The August 27 update by the National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD) said that Bulgaria’s national infection rate was 247.8 per 100 000 population.
Bulgarian National Television said on August 27 that according to its calculations, three more districts had become red zones – Varna, Pazardzhik and Stara Zagora. It said that 10 districts out of the 24 districts in Bulgaria were now over the red zone threshold.
Earlier this week, the NCIPD, in its report for the two-week period ending August 22, said that two districts were red zones: Bourgas and Veliko Turnovo.
Katsarov said that he expected the Chief State Health Inspector to assess the epidemic situation in order to assess whether the measures need to be tightened.
The August 27 report by the national information system said that the number of patients with Covid-19 in hospital in Bulgaria was 2985. This is an increase of 824 compared with the figure in the August 20 report.
(Screenshot: BNT)
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