COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria

COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria
Number of confirmed cases in Bulgaria by province (as of 7 May)   0 confirmed   1–9 confirmed   10–49 confirmed   50–99 confirmed   100+ confirmed
Disease	COVID-19
Virus strain	SARS-CoV-2
Location	Bulgaria
First outbreak	Wuhan, Hubei, China (globally)
Index case	Pleven, Gabrovo
Arrival date	8 March 2020
Confirmed cases	2,100
Active cases	1,480
Recovered	521
Deaths	99
Government website
Bulgarian Ministry of Health Coronavirus.bg

The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have spread to Bulgaria in March 2020.

Cases

The first case was confirmed on 8 March 2020, a 27-year-old man from Pleven and a 75-year-old woman from Gabrovo. Neither of the two had traveled to areas with known coronavirus cases. The man tested positive for the virus after being hospitalized for a respiratory infection. Two other samples in Pleven and Gabrovo were positive on 8 March.

Response

After the number of patients in the country had reached 23, the Bulgarian Parliament voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency from 13 March until 13 April.

A 14-day preventive house quarantine was made for citizens who have been in contact with a COVID-19 patient or have returned from an overseas region with a high number of cases.

For patients tested positive for the virus a 21-day house quarantine was created. The National Crisis-management Staff later increased the recovery house quarantine by a week to 28 days. With the continuing increase of COVID-19 cases on a daily basis, on 1 April the Bulgarian government requested that Parliament extends the state of emergency by one month until 13 May.

Numbers

As of 14 May 2020, there are 2,100 officially confirmed cases spread throughout all Bulgarian provinces, with 99 recorded deaths and 521 recoveries. A total of 61,711 PCR tests (or 8,868 per million citizens) had been performed by 13 May, with 3.40% being positive.