Bulgaria’s state IT firm: Record number of ‘green certificates’ downloaded in spite of DDoS attacks
A record number of “green certificates” were downloaded after the announcement of amended Covid-19 measures, in spite of malicious Dedicated Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on the online system, according to Bulgaria’s state-owned IT company Informatsionno Obsluzhvane.
The firm said that in the first hours after the announcement on October 20 of the amended measures, a record number – more than 106 000 – were downloaded from the system,
As of October 21, the system was issuing more than 15 000 documents an hour.
It said that DDoS attacks had necessitated “ the application of more aggressive measures to limit malicious traffic and the use of specialized infrastructure for analysis and counteraction” that enabled the service to resume, in spite of some delays.
Users can download their electronic version of the certificate from the National Health Insurance Fund website https://www.his.bg/bg/dgc and store it on their mobile devices.
Separately, the unified information portal said that on October 21, the first day of the amended measures ordered by caretaker Health Minister Stoicho Katsarov, 28 191 doses of vaccines against Covid-19 were administered in Bulgaria, bringing the total to 2 685 512.
Of the doses administered in Bulgaria on October 21, a total of 13 918 were Comirnaty (BioNTech-Pfizer), 12 656 the single-dose Janssen, 1611 Moderna and only six AstraZeneca.
Of the doses administered in the city of Sofia on Thursday, 4736 were Janssen, 3198 BioNTech-Pfizer and 756 Moderna. No AstraZeneca jabs were administered in the city.
On October 22, speaking to Bulgarian National Television, Medicines Agency head Bogdan Kirilov issued an assurance that there were enough vaccines against Covid-19 available in the country and none were due to expire before the end of this year.
According to Kirilov, the trend of the past 10 days had been for between 6000 and 8000 vaccine doses to be administered each day, while in the past two days there had been a significant increase. He said that 13 500 doses were administered on Wednesday and more than 28 000 on Thursday.
“More than two million (doses of) vaccines are available in the country. I do not expect a shortage situation,” Kirilov said.
He said that people aged 65 and over could be vaccinated free of charge against seasonal flu, and 230 000 doses of these vaccines were being distributed to GPs. Sufficient vaccines against influenza were available at pharmacies, he said.
Bulgarian National Television reported on October 22 that a special meeting, the National Health Insurance Fund supervisory board had decided to allow general practitioners to prescribe medicines to Covid-19 patients free of charge.
The prescriptions will be electronic and issued only to patients who have health insurance. Up to now, free medications were prescribed only by doctors in Covid zones.
(Photo: André Rainaud/freeimages.com)
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