SOFIA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria's COVID-19 death toll has risen to 9,008 after 35 new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, official figures showed on Saturday.
At the same time, the number of confirmed infections rose by 695 to 218,269, according to data published by the national COVID-19 information portal.
The data also showed that 1,324 people had recovered from the disease during the same period, raising the country's total recoveries to 184,249.
Bulgaria reported its first COVID-19 death on March 11. The highest daily increase, 221 deaths, was reported on Dec. 1, when the country's COVID-19 death toll had risen to 4,035.
According to the latest data collated by the University of Oxford-based Our World in Data, the Balkan country ranks fifth in the European Union (EU) in terms of the cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people with 1,296, and has the EU's highest case fatality rate of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic -- 4.1 percent.
As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccinations are underway in some countries with authorized coronavirus vaccines.
However, Bulgaria has failed in this effort so far. According to Our World in Data, cumulative COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people in Bulgaria are 0.54, and the country ranks last in the EU.
Meanwhile, 236 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to the latest information released by the World Health Organization. Enditem
