Ministry of Health study into the number of people who had the coronavirus

A procedure has been launched to gather information on the number of people who have had the coronavirus. This was announced at a briefing at the Ministry of Health on June 21 by Dr. Stoycho Katsarov, caretaker Health Minister.

He gave a presentation to the Cibalab laboratory, which has conducted its own study to determine as accurately as possible how many people have encountered the coronavirus so far.

"This served to launch a procedure that would allow us to gather absolutely all the information available on the health network regarding the number of people who have had the virus," the caretaker minister said at the beginning of the briefing.

On Friday, Minister Katsarov had a video conference with all software companies that develop medical software. They have reached such an agreement with them:

"We will build a technical place where we can gather information about all vaccinated people, everyone who has been hospitalized, information about everyone who has been tested, and all available information about antibody testing from March 1 last year to date", he explained.

This information will be sorted by PIN, by districts and by municipalities. In practice, collecting this data will result in the smallest number of people who have encountered the virus so far.

The minister explained why such an approach was chosen rather than through antibody tests among the population.

"When you encounter the virus, you form antibodies, but after a while they decrease and may disappear completely. This does not mean that you do not have immunity and does not mean that you have not encountered the virus," added Katsarov.

If an antibody test is done, only those who have recently encountered the virus will be identified, but those who encountered the virus months ago will not be identified.

The new method will be a one-step collection process, but this database will continue to be filled from now on. All information is expected to be obtained within a month. The price for this is in the range of BGN 10,000 - 15,000.

Dr. Nedyalko Kalachev from the "Cibalab" laboratory presented the conclusions he made. He explained that this study was not nationally representative.

"Samples were obtained from various cities and towns. We tried to normalize the number of samples according to a possible population report, but this was not always possible. We chose N-antibodies as a target. The logic was to see what the presence of the virus was, but yes we do not overlap the antibodies that are formed by the vaccine with those of a sick or asymptomatic person, "said Dr. Kalachev.

The samples were collected from 38 cities and towns. They are processed in Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna, Silistra, Veliko Turnovo and Vidin. The study was conducted in pre-hospital laboratories through self-financing and voluntary work.

In Sofia city, 500 samples were taken, and the conclusion is that about a third of the population has been in contact with the virus. Pazardzhik district has the highest percentage - out of 52 samples, 32 were positive.

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