First confirmed cases of Omicron coronavirus variant in Bulgaria

Bulgaria’s Chief State Health Inspector, associate professor Angel Kunchev on January 2 announced that 12 cases of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant have been confirmed in Bulgaria. Thus, Bulgaria is the fifth Balkan country in which the new variant of the coronavirus was detected.

Out of 275 positive samples tested at the National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD) by sequencing, the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was identified in 12. There are people from all age groups among the infected, 9 of them are men and 3 are women.

They were taken from Covid-19 patients in the period December 16 – December 22 from 4 medical establishments. Eleven of the patients are from Sofia city and 1 from Sofia district.

Out of the 275 samples, 12 (4.4%) tested positive for Omicron and 263 (95.6%) tested positive for Delta and its sub-variants.

The Chief State Health Inspector said that the patients do not need hospital care. 7 of the 12 have not been vaccinated, 5 of them had been vaccinated 9 months ago with two shots of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, one of them with the single-dose Jansen.

There is a child under the age of 15 among the infected. Only one of them had been abroad, he arrived from the UK 2 days ago.

Observations to date show that those with booster doses are the least affected by Omicron. Today in front of the vaccination centre of "Pirogov" there was a queue of people wanting to be vaccinated.

According to Angel Kunchev, the measures that will be taken depend on the spread and the number of people that Omicron will affect. However, the likelihood of extreme measures is unlikely.

"What we cannot compromise and we will not agree to, despite the pressure, despite the wishes of different people, including associations, producers and tourism, we cannot compromise people's health and bring the health system to its knees. These are the two key moments that will influence the decisions on the measures," said the Chief State Health Inspector.

He added that it is possible that many Covid-19 test results may go unreported, as there are many people who take the repid tests at home and do not register as positive, but self-isolate.

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1,076 new cases were registered in the country in the past 24 hours, from 7,429 tests.

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