People queue during the night at Bulgaria's only 24-hour vaccination centre

About 200 people were vaccinated against the novel coronavirus last night in the only 24-hour vaccination centre in Bulgaria which is located in Sofia's St. Ivan Rilski Hospital, BNT reported. Many people choose to be vaccinated during the night because they hope to avoid queuing and losing a working day, hospital officials say. The whole vaccination procedure takes about 5-10 minutes, hospital officials added.

Bulgaria’s cabinet to arrange plane deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines

Bulgaria’s cabinet is working to arrange plane deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines at the expense of the state budget, this country’s Premier Boyko Borissov announced during a visit to Neochim Company in the town of Dimitrovgrad. According to him, plane deliveries would reduce time by at least 2 days. Vaccination is the only way to contain the new wave of Covid-19, PM Boyko Borissov pointed out. Bulgaria’s Minister of Health Professor Kostadin Angelov expressed satisfaction with the latest vaccination rates in this country. There is no chaos in the vaccination process, although some local logistics problems occur, Minister Angelov said.

Choice of vaccine expected to be available in March

In March every Bulgarian citizen will be able to choose which vaccine to be immunized with. This is what head of the Sofia Regional Health Inspectorate, Dr. Dancho Penchev, has told BNT. On Thursday, 12,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine are expected to arrive in Bulgaria and by the end of the week about 53,000 AstraZeneca vaccines are expected to be delivered. Over half a million doses of different types of vaccines will be delivered in Bulgaria next month, it was reported.

Bulgaria registers 14% positive tests for Covid-19 in past day

Bulgaria has reported a total of 1,925 new cases of coronavirus for the past 24 hours, the data of the Single Coronavirus Information Portal show. This is the largest number of new daily infections in the country since the beginning of the year. 14% of the 13,695 tests performed returned positive. In recent days, the percentage of new infections has remained at about 10%. Most of the new cases are in Sofia - 478, followed by Burgas - with 182, and Plovdiv - with 138. The death toll from the virus in the past 24 hours was 79 and Bulgaria is on the verge of reaching 10,000 victims of the pandemic. There are currently 3,933 patients with Covid-19 in hospital as 334 are in intensive care. More than 130,000 people have already received their first vaccine as 11,709 were vaccinated in the past 24 hours. The two doses of the vaccine have so far been administered to a little less than 28,000 people.

Metropolitan Naum of Ruse: Every Orthodox Christian is gifted with free will to choose whether to get vaccinated

Every Orthodox Christian is gifted by God with the free will to choose whether to get vaccinated or not. However, people should realize that they are responsible for their own health and the health of others, Metropolitan Naum of Ruse wrote in a social network, BNT reported. "Talks causing fear and making people feel they are sinful if they received Covid-19 vaccines are absolutely unfounded, manipulative and devoid of common sense," Metropolitan Naum added. “Those who want to get jabs should seek assistance from their general practitioners”, Metropolitan Naum of Ruse went on to say.

Compiled by: Vesela Krasteva

English: Radio Bulgaria English Language Team

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