Bulgarian Prof. Petrova: We Need an Urgent Lockdown for Adults without Vaccines

The most adequate move at the moment is a lockdown for unvaccinated elderly people, as they did in Russia. The most vulnerable part of the population should go home, not communicate, not ride public transport, where the disease is most common. A total lockdown of the state will be catastrophic for many businesses, for education.

This was stated by the director of the Institute of Microbiology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Penka Petrova on bTV. Urgent measures must be taken to keep the health system afloat. Unfortunately, only 600,000 people are currently proven to have contracted the infection, and 1.5 million have been vaccinated. Ie we have two thirds of the population that is not protected in any way, she added.

According to Prof. Petrova, the fourth COVID wave is the heaviest in Bulgaria. It started much earlier than in 2020 and in October we have six times more coronavirus deaths than last year. We are not talking about total mortality, but about COVID-19, she said.

Without measures, there will be 1,000 deaths a day, not only from COVID, but from all diseases, especially if the planned operations are stopped, Prof. Petrova predicts and specified that this will not happen because the government will take measures.

Our government may have been waiting for the vaccination rate to rise, but once it turned out that this would not happen, a green certificate was introduced, timely or not, but it is a fact. If everyone had been warned in July, we would not have missed these favorable months for vaccination, she explained.

Masks must be worn. Outside Sofia we can hardly see people with masks in shops and restaurants. Disinfection, distance, proper wearing of masks, these...