Health Minister Kostadin Angelov said that nearly 1,150 million leva had been provided for the health care sector since the start of the COVID pandemic so as to guarantee the predictability of expenditures. He attended a working meeting with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov on Sunday.

Angelov said 858 million leva had been distributed, including nearly 85 million leva for Remdesivir, some 200 million leva paid for COVID vaccines, 5 million leva for one-off tourist services for health workers, 395 million leva in support of front-line workers, and 50.5 million leva in subsidies to hospitals which were directly involved in the anti-COVID effort at the end of 2020. Also, 75 million leva were allocated for personal protective equipment for all treatment facilities, regional health inspectorates and emergency health centres, and 29 million leva were earmarked for diagnostic hospital equipment.

An allocation of 5 million leva is intended for payments to health workers involved in the vaccination rollout, and 22 million leva were provided for investment projects for vaccine production by BB-NCIPD Ltd.

The National Health Insurance Fund has provided 237 million leva for doctors, nurses and attendants in the treatment facilities. There are 50 million leva which will again be distributed among hospitals under strong pressure during the epidemic.

A buffer of 600 million leva has been budgeted for the whole of 2021, of which 96 million leva have been spent to date, said Angelov. The remaining nearly 500 million leva will guarantee the security of the health care system, and every contingency expenditure can rely on that buffer.

Bulgaria expects to receive 5.5 million vaccine doses in the second quarter. On Monday, 138,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are due to be delivered.

The outgoing Prime Minister thanked the European Commission and the large EU Member States, which donated some of their doses for Bulgarians to be vaccinated. Borissov said: "That is why, as [Defence Minister Krassimir] Karakachanov proposed a few days ago, vaccination centres should open in the outlands of, and along the borders with, North Macedonia and Serbia so that we can vaccinate the Bulgarian citizens there - just as the Member States that have always been a role model to us help out smaller and poorer countries." RI/DD

Source: Sofia