The National Center for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases of Bulgaria said that the centre had completed sampling 254 samples. These samples are taken from patients with COVID19 in the country.
The samples revealed that the BA.5 lineage of the Omicron strain and its subvariants were still the dominant ones in the country.
The 254 samples were taken across the country between July 1 to August 3 from patients with active COVID-19 virus, and The samples displayed that out of a total of 28 districts of Bulgaria, 20 districts are dominantly impacted by omicron variant or one of its lineages.
According to NCIPD, the BA.5 lineage and its subevents, collectively referred to as BA.5.x, is the main reason for the current coronavirus worldwide. In January 2022, BA.5 lineage was detected in South Africa. Later, World Health Organisation (WHO) categorised this variant as a concern and also added that this variant needs to be monitored.
These subvariants show the signs of Transmission Advantage to other lineages and have additional amino acid changes that are observed in the epidemiology and fitness advantage compared to different present variants.
BA.5.x was found in 186 cases, 73.2 per cent of the total sample size taken by UCIPD, collectively referred to as BA.2.x, compared to 41.2 per cent of the sample in the previous batch sequenced by UCIPD.
BA.2 lineage and its subvariants were dominant previously, and UCIPD referred that BA.2.x was found in 13 samples which are 5.1 per cent in total.
Bulgarian Authorities dropped the idea of wearing protective face masks despite having the lowest COVID 19 vaccination in the European Union on August 12, 2022.
The previous week the authorities of the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, imposed the rule of wearing protective face masks to shield the citizens from COVID19 again.