Bulgaria’s PM on Covid-19: No closing of businesses, no travel restrictions
Bulgaria’s government does not intend ordering businesses to close, restoring the requirement for Covid certificate or imposing travel restrictions, outgoing Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said on July 14 after discussing the country’s Covid-19 situation with senior health officials.
As of July 14, a total of 14 out of 28 districts in Bulgaria are Covid-19 yellow zones, meaning a morbidity rate between 100 and 249.9 per 100 000 population on a 14-day basis.
The 14 districts are Blagoevgrad, Bourgas, Varna, Vratsa, Gabrovo, Dobrich, Montana, Pernik, Plovdiv, Razgrad, Sofia district, Sofia city, Stara Zagora and Yambol.
The remaining 14 districts are green zones.
The morbidity rate is highest in Sofia city, 249.72, just below the threshold to be declared a red zone.
Bulgaria’s national Covid-19 morbidity rate is 142.99 per 100 000 population on a 14-day basis.
The unified information portal on Covid-19 in Bulgaria said that in the past day, of 5586 tests, 1021 – about 18.27 per cent – proved positive.
Petkov told a briefing after meeting the health officials: “I want to reassure absolutely everyone that we are monitoring the situation very carefully, but the data shows that Bulgarians can have a peaceful summer”.
At the meeting, it was decided that this week the Pandemic Response Plan would be updated based on the amendments to the Health Act, Petkov said.
“I want there to be clear predictability. We have six stages, based again on occupancy of hospital beds and intensive care beds. The data currently shows that most of the country is in stage 0, with a few areas in stage 1,” he said.
Earlier, Chief State Health Inspector Angel Kunchev said in an interview with bTV that it was true that the number of cases was increasing, but still most of the regions of Bulgaria were at stage 0.
Several were at stage 1, in which only the wearing of protective masks in health facilities is envisaged, Kunchev said.
He said that the new pandemic plan, which is being “updated” according to the specifics of the new variants of the virus, would be announced on July 15 at the latest.
Kunchev said that in spite of the increasing incidence of Covid-19, the situation was now radically different, as the new variants were not experienced as severely and fewer people needed to be admitted to hospital.
“Furthermore, we are much better prepared now, we have vaccines, we have antivirals, hospitals know where to find what, the doctors themselves know how to treat it,” he said.
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