Photo: iStock
It was confirmed in a man in his 20s in the northern town of Pleven
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Bulgaria reached 420,749, after 12,171 tests identified 95 new infections on Wednesday. The test positivity rate now stands at 0.78 per cent.
The capital Sofia tops the list of new cases with 17 positive tests, followed by Sofia Region and Pazardzhik with 9 cases each. The active cases are 10,757. Currently, the hospitalized patients number 1,954, including 227 in intensive care.
Another 1,064 COVID-19 patients have recovered over the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 392,035.
With 25 new fatalities, the death toll now adds up to 17,957. With 17,626 new inoculations over the last 24 hours, 1,619,744 persons in aggregate have received a coronavirus vaccine so far, and 724,218 are fully vaccinated.
Later in the day, the National Centre of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD) reported the first case of the Indian Delta variant of COVID in Bulgaria.
It was confirmed in a man in his 20s in the northern town of Pleven. The sample sent by the local hospital on April 21 was sequenced by the NCIPD on May 5 and was submitted to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), which found in June that the sequence is a variant of concern, also known as the Indian variant. Upon diagnosis in the hospital's emergency room, the patient was treated for COVID-19 at home. He has not reported travelling abroad.
This is the only case of the Indian variant of COVID out of 34 samples from Pleven Region sequenced in April and May, the NCIPD said.
