All but two Bulgarian districts are now Covid-19 dark red zones

There are 8 districts in Bulgaria with more than 1,000 infected per 100,000 people. The district of Montana has the highest infection rate of 1,425 cases per 100,000 people. The capital Sofia comes second.

Almost the whole country is in the Covid-19 dark red zone. Out of a total of 28 districts in Bulgaria, only two have an infection rate of 500 per 100,000 people – Smolyan and Kurdzhali.

The Single Coronavirus Information Portal on November 1 reported close to 1,460 new Covid cases from 16,960 tests, which equates to 8,6% positivity rate. There are close to 8,000 hospitalisations, 630 of which are in intensive care.

Prof. Mira Kozhuharova, the advisor to the caretaker Minister of Health, told the Bulgarian National Television’s show “Denyat Zapochva” (the Day Begins) that the fourth Covid wave in Bulgaria is already higher than the previous waves. She forecasts that the peak will be reached this week.

Prof. Kozhuharova added that a complete national lockdown is possible if the hospitals are not able to provide treatment for everyone in need. She also said that the decision as to whether the positive antibodies test results will be used for issuing of “green certificates” or not is expected on Wednesday, November 3.

“6,000 to 8,000 hospital beds, occuppied by people not in intensive care, is still acceptable. Reaching over 8,000... actually during the previous wave there was a short period of time when approximately 10,000 beds were occupied, the healthcare system will probably not be able to cope with more than this limit, simply because there is not enough staff. I will not comment on the topic of antobodies test result being used for issuing of green certificate. My personal opinion is that we should not rely on this method in Bulgaria, since this means people will stop testing for the virus, which currently gives us results – there are different laboratories that have data with various information. This is practically a rejection of the “green certificate,” Prof. Kozhuharova said.

As for the vaccination pace – there were close to 5,000 immunizations yesterday. Including them, the total number of applied doses is a little more than 2,860,000, while the number of people with a completed vaccination course with 2 doses is more than 1,511,000.