Page 7 - Sofia Globe News Today

Against the background of the improved Covid-19 situation in Bulgaria, as of June 4 all EU citizens (including Bulgarian and Dutch) and citizens of the Schengen area residing in Bulgaria are exempted from the requirement to present a negative PCR test and go into 10-day quarantine when arriving in the Netherlands, the Foreign Ministry in Sofia said. Test and quarantine requirements remain for arrivals in the Netherlands from high-risk Covid-19 countries. More information is available at https:/...

The cost of the two naval patrol vessels being acquired by the Bulgarian Navy could rise between 400 million and a billion leva because the contract signed last year did not include ammunition for them, caretaker Defence Minister Georgi Panayatov told a news conference on June 3. As The Sofia Globe reported at the time, Bulgaria’s Defence Ministry signed on November 12 a contract worth 984 million leva (about 503 million euro) including value-added tax with German firm Fr. Lürssen Werft for ...

Bulgaria is among seven European Union countries to be ready to start issuing the EU Digital Covid Certificate, according to a statement on June 1 by the European Commission. The Commission said that on June 1, the EU Digital COVID Certificate reached another important milestone with the go-live of the technical system at EU level, which allows to verify certificates in a secure and privacy-friendly way. The EU certificate was proposed by the Commission to resume safe travelling this summer. It...

Marking World No Tobacco Day on May 31, Bulgaria’s Health Ministry said that amid the isolation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, many smokers had decided to give up smoking. “At the same time, overcoming tobacco dependence is not so easy, especially given the additional stress of the socio-economic difficulties of the pandemic.” The ministry highlighted the availability of counselling at all regional health inspectorates on giving up smoking, while pointing to research showing that Bulgar...

Of 13 164 tests done in the past day, 293 – about 2.22 per cent – proved positive. To date, 417 819 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in Bulgaria, a figure that includes those who have died, the active cases and those who have recovered from the virus. There are 21 026 active cases, a decrease of 1565 in the past day. The report said that 1838 people in Bulgaria had recovered from the virus in the past day, bringing the total to 379 156. There are 3295 patients with Covid-19 in hospital...

A total of 28.3 per cent of non-financial businesses in Bulgaria surveyed by the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said that their revenue from sales of goods and services in April 2021 was down compared with the previous month. The poll was part of a special series initiated by the NSI to assess the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on business. Of the 3770 businesses polled, 53.1 per cent reported no change in revenue in April compared with March, while 18.2 per cent said that their revenue ha...

A regular monthly poll by the National Statistical Institute (NSI) has found a significant improvement in business sentiment in Bulgaria, continuing the upward trend that the series of polls showed since the start of 2021. This is in contrast to just more than a year ago when, against the backdrop of the Covid-19 crisis in Bulgaria, business sentiment plummeted in April 2020 to a 23-year low. The NSI said that in May 2021, the total business climate indicator increased by 12.4 percentage points...

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has recommended that the European Commission approve the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 in adolescents aged from 12 to 15 years, the agency’s Dr Marco Cavaleri told a news conference on May 28. The recommendation had been transmitted to the European Commission which will give final approval, while it will be up to individual EU countries to decide if and when to administer the vaccine in the ...

Bulgaria’s caretaker Health Minister Stoicho Katsarov issued an order on May 28 giving approval of the country’s versions of the EU Digital Covid Certificate, the ministry said. The order, which will go into effect on June 1, sets out the formats of certificates of a completed vaccination cycle, incomplete vaccination process and completed mixed vaccination cycle. The last-mentioned is a reference to the second dose being from a manufacturer different from the one used in the first dose. Th...

Bulgaria’s caretaker Health Minister Stoicho Katsarov has ordered an investigation by the National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD) into the handling of the Covid-19 crisis by the former government and the now-disbanded national operational headquarters, the Health Ministry said on May 28. Katsarov has given the NCIPD 30 days to analysis activities related to public health services between March 1 2020 and May 31 2021 in the context of the epidemic caused by Covid-19, the ...