Health sciences

Any information on the origin of the coronavirus causing Covid-19 that will be collected during the WHO mission in China will be valuable. Discovering the origin of a virus, we will be prepared for other risks of virus transmission from animals to humans, told BNR virologist Assoc. Prof. Lyubomira Nikolaeva-Glomb from the National Center for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases.

Many leading health officials believe that there is a high probability that COVID-19 will become an endemic disease, that is, that it will be permanently present, but probably in lower levels of infection than today.
Chief Executive Officer of the biotech firm Moderna, a company that produces a vaccine against the coronavirus, says that "SARS-CoV-2 is not going anywhere."

Brdo pri Kranju – The vast majority of existing coronavirus restrictions will be extended until 22 January, the government decided as it conducted its weekly review of the measures on Wednesday. The only major change is an extension of the formal state of the epidemic by 60 days.

US firm Johnson & Johnson is likely to apply for EU approval for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate in February, a top lawmaker said on Wednesday.

Clinical data of the vaccine, which Johnson & Johnson is developing through its subsidiary Janssen, have been assessed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) since Dec. 1 under a rolling review to speed up possible approval.

New coronavirus infections in Greece fell to 671 on Wednesday from 866 on Tuesday, bringing the total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to 146,688.

Greece has received the first batch of coronavirus vaccines developed by Moderna Inc.

Coming on top of ongoing distribution of Pfizer-BioNTech shots, the country received the first 8,000 doses of the vaccine, approved for use by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) last week, and expects a total of 20,000 doses to be delivered by the end of January.

"According to information from the Ministry of Health, 1.5 million dozes have been requested of the first two vaccines - Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna - to be supplied by the end of the year, which is enough for about 10 percent of the population in Bulgaria," told BNR Arkadi Sharkov, health economist from the Expert Club for Economics and Politics (EKIP).

By the end of January, a flu wave is expected to occur. That's what Prof. Iva Hristova, Deputy Director of the Center for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases said before BNT.

She pointed out that the flu virus is late this year and the initial  expectations of specialists are for a much lower flu wave.

Turkey's more than 1 million health care service workers have begun to make appointments for COVID-19 vaccinations as the country is finalizing tests on the injections brought from China.

An online system to arrange vaccinations is already up and running but for the time being only health care staff are able to make appointments for the coronavirus jab.

The European Medicines Agency said Tuesday that AstraZeneca and Oxford University have submitted an application for their Covid-19 vaccine to be licensed across the European Union.