SOFIA, March 11 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 continues to spread and take lives in Bulgaria, but a nationwide lockdown would not be imposed for now, top health officials said here on Thursday.
Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, head of the National Operational Headquarters for the Fight against the Coronavirus Pandemic, said at a press conference that the weekly count of coronavirus infections and deaths has increased by 38 percent and 53 percent, respectively.
"This is very worrying," Mutafchiyski said.
One week ago, 5,307 Bulgarians were hospitalized. On Thursday, their number stood at 6,395. The number of those treated in intensive care has risen from 440 to 501, he said.
Mutafchiyski, who is also chief of the Military Medical Academy, said some of the country's hospitals have already "exhausted or half-exhausted" their capacities.
On Thursday morning, the Military Medical Academy in Sofia had only five vacant beds with three patients waiting in the emergency department. Three days ago, two clinics with a total of 57 beds were transformed into COVID-19 units, Mutafchiyski said.
Things "are not going in the right direction and measures should be taken," he said.
"Finding the right solution in this situation is very difficult," Health Minister Kostadin Angelov responded.
"Full lockdown. Close everything. Introduce a curfew. I believe that the Bulgarian public is not ready at this stage for this type of decision," Angelov said.
Such restrictive measures must be introduced at the appropriate time, when people are ready to have faith in these measures and would comply with them, he added.
The Bulgarian government eased the coronavirus rules shortly after President Rumen Radev scheduled the country's parliamentary elections for April 4. On Jan. 26, Angelov issued an order allowing the reopening of certain facilities, such as shopping malls, that have been closed since the end of November last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To date, the country has registered 269,579 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 10,999 deaths.
As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in an increasing number of countries with already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.
Meanwhile, 263 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 81 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain, and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on March 9. Enditem
