Bulgaria gets first 2,400 doses of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccines
Bulgaria received the first batch of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by US-based biotechnology company Moderna, consisting of 2,400 doses, health minister Kostadin Angelov said on Wednesday.
A further 4,000 doses of Moderna's vaccine are expected to reach Bulgaria on January 25, Angelov said in a video file published on the website of local NOVA TV.
The immunisation with the Moderna vaccine will begin in Sofia on January 14, the minister added.
Last week, the health ministry said that Bulgaria expects to receive a further 60,450 doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine by the end of January.
Also last week, Angelov said that the country expects to get a total of 4.5 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and Cambridge-headquartered biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which awaits the approval of the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The first phase of the Covid-19 immunisation in Bulgaria started among healthcare professionals on December 27 with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine with the first 9,750 doses delivered to the country. The second phase envisages the vaccination of people in elderly homes as well as school teachers.
Bulgaria has registered a total of 209,881 coronavirus cases as of Wednesday, with 140,548 recoveries and 8,279 associated deaths. The number of people vaccinated against the coronavirus is 15,780, according to data published by the health ministry.