Another wave of coronavirus is highly probable: Angel Kunchev

“Immunization of children under the age of 16 will be possible within three months”, Chief State Health Inspector Assoc. Prof. Angel Kunchev said in an interview for bTV, adding that vaccination of children over the age of 12 has been authorized in the US. Angel Kunchev warned that another wave of coronavirus is highly probable but added that he hoped it would not come during the summer season.

“I very much hope that if there are more surprises due to the new variants of the virus they will come during the autumn season and that we shall have an untroubled summer,” he said. Assoc. Prof. Kunchev stated he was worried by the dramatic decline in interest in the AstraZeneca vaccine. "Unless a decision is made quickly who to administer the remaining doses to, they will go to waste," he said. 

1,078 new infections in past 24 hours, positivity rate at a little over 6%

1,078 is the number of newly registered infections in Bulgaria out of 16,392 tests performed in the past 24 hours, a positivity rate of 6.58%, Single Information Portal data show. The highest number of new infections is in Sofia-city – 205, followed by the regions of Plovdiv - 116, Stara Zagora - 100 and Ruse - 62 cases.The number of active cases is down to 42,838.

5,571 coronavirus patients are being treated in hospital, 555 of them in intensive care. 116 have died in the past 24 hours. As regards coronavirus mortality rate, Bulgaria ranks 14^th in the world and 5^th in Europe. 3,005 is the number of recoveries in the past 24 hours. More than 25,400 doses of vaccine have been administered in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of vaccinations to 963,539.

311,845 people have been given their second dose of vaccine. 

Compiled by: Ioan Kolev

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