Influenza vaccine

The World Health Organization has tailored its Covid-19 vaccination recommendations for a new phase of the pandemic, suggesting that healthy children and adolescents may not necessarily need a shot but older, high-risk groups should get a booster between 6 to 12 months after their last vaccine.

In the last 24 hours, 13 new cases of coronavirus infection have been confirmed in Bulgaria, according to the data of the Unified Information Portal. No deaths.

875 tests were performed, of which 98 PCR tests and 777 rapid antigen tests. The proportion of positive tests is 1.49 percent.

Experts have denied a link between the COVID-19 vaccine and the increasing number of heart attacks, which has become a hot topic of debate as people raised their concerns that the heart attack cases seen in the past few months of winter are an outcome of the vaccine shot.

Over 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in Bulgaria will be scrapped. They expired last year. It is possible that the number of vaccines for destruction is even higher, because the health inspections still report unused quantities. In this year, nearly 2 million and 800 thousand doses of vaccines expire, the interest in immunization is weak.

Romania is on the verge of a flu epidemic, Digi24 TV reports. The high temperatures in the country for the last few days favor the activity of viruses, noted the media in our northern neighbor, BTA reported.

"I don't tend to make predictions about how severe the flu wave will be, but there are two reasons why experts are particularly cautious. One is the data from the Southern Hemisphere, where Australia and New Zealand have faced their worst flu epidemic since 5- 6 years. The other reason is that public immunity to influenza has declined during the pandemic."

Ljubljana – Vaccination against the flu will be free of charge for all Slovenian residents with health insurance this season after it was already free the last two seasons to better fight the coronavirus epidemic.

Pfizer's COVID-19 pill appears to provide little or no benefit for younger adults, while still reducing the risk of hospitalization and death for high-risk seniors, according to a large study published on Aug. 24.

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers have reported.

"From now on, there is talk of a one-time, annual vaccination against COVID-19, similar to the seasonal flu vaccine", said on bTV Prof. Ilko Getov, our country's representative in the European Medicines Agency.