announced that bulgarian tennis player viktoriya tomova had tested positive for covid-19 on the site of a tournament in palermo, italy which happened to be the first official pro tennis event after the pandemic began. 23 august bulgaria's minister of youth and sports krasen kralev tested positive. 25 october bulgarian prime minister boyko borisov tested positive. he said on facebook that he had "general malaise." november by 10 november, boyko borisov had recovered from covid-19. on 28 november 2020, bulgaria entered a second lockdown, which was characterized as a "partial" one due to being less strict than the first, and was envisioned to be in place until christmas. this decision was regarded by many experts as being long overdue because of the huge strain on the country's health system, resulting in many people not being able to receive access to adequate medical care, and the prime minister faced strong criticism from other politicians. december on 18 december 2020, the government confirmed that the lockdown will be extended until 31 january 2021. march 2021 from 22 march until 31 march 2021 the country was under another lockdown, the third one since the start of the pandemic. may 2021 during the second half of the month the weekly positivity rate fell to below 4%, with the number of people testing positive the lowest since early october 2020. june 2021 in june 2021, genomic sequencing confirmed the presence of the beta and delta variants in bulgaria. july 2021 by the second half of july 2021, delta had emerged as the dominant variant (showing up in over 50% of genomic sequencing samples), starting to displace alpha. august 2021 by mid august close to 99% of the samples tested positive for delta. october 2021 due to the worsening epidemiological situation, a "green certificate" that could be obtained by showing proof of vaccination, recovery from an infection or a negative covid-19 test was introduced as a requirement for many public activities from 21 october. it was also regarded as a way of avoiding another lockdown. november 2021 the presence of the 'delta plus' subvariant was confirmed in november 2021. december 2021 on 22 december 2021, the cibalab private laboratories signalled that the omicron variant had been discovered in six virus samples. iva hristova, head of the center for infectious and parasitic diseases, insisted that the presence of omicron will need to be confirmed through genomic sequencing, for which the private laboratories do not possess the technology, with accurate findings expected to become available after the new year. mathematician ognyan kunchev has stated that the sequencing process in bulgaria takes around 10 days and needs to be sped up as well as cover more samples. on 29 december 2021, virologist radka argirova who serves as an advisor of prime minister kiril petkov stated that there are strong indications that omicron is already in bulgaria, referring to a number of suspected cases, all of them among people who had travelled abroad. variant changes on 2 january 2022, the first 12 cases of the omicron variant were officially confirmed by the health authorities. 11 of them were in sofia city province while 1 was in sofia province, with 7 of the cases among non-vaccinated, 5 among vaccinated and none among people with a booster dose. only one of the people infected with omicron had recently been abroad. omicron was found in 4.4% of the 275 sequenced samples with delta making up the rest. none of the infected required hospitalization. as of 10 january 2022, 52 new cases of omicron had been discovered, based on 505 sequenced samples for the period up to 3 january, with omicron accounting for 10.3% of the swabs, with the rest being delta. as of 19 january 2022, 227 new cases of omicron had been identified, based on 522 sequenced samples for the period up to 10 january, with the ratio of omicron to delta being 43.5% to 56.75%. by mid to late january 2022, omicron had emerged as the main variant, accounting for 74.5% of cases by 20 january, being found in 249 out of 334 samples. rise in cases on 12 january 2022, 7062 new cases were registered, the most since the start of the pandemic, exceeding the previous record number of 6816 daily positive tests reported on 27 october 2021. after the health authorities reported 9996 positive tests on 18 january 2022, on the next day the number of registered daily cases surpassed 10 000 for the first time, with 11 181 new infections announced for the previous 24 hours. on 26 january 2022, a new high of 12 399 official cases was reported by the ministry of health. reinfections and coinfections as of 14 january 2022, there have been 4692 officially recorded reinfections in bulgaria. according to an academic paper analyzing the period between march 2020 and december 2021, there had been 31 cases of people infected three times and one instance of an individual contracting covid-19 for a fourth time. in late january 2022, the first instance of covid-19 and influenza a (strain h3n2) co-infection was confirmed. rules regarding covid-19 positive people from 11 january 2022, the mandatory isolation requirement for people with a positive covid-19 test was reduced from 14 to 10 days. february 2022 on 4 february 2022, the health authorities confirmed the presence of the ba.2 subvariant of omicron, which had been discovered in 7 samples from sofia, bourgas and targovishte. the ba.3 sublineage was detected as well. according to assessments, the fifth wave of the virus, which had begun without the full subsiding of the fourth, peaked in late january and early february. april 2022 on 1 april 2022 the emergency epidemiological situation in bulgaria was lifted by the council of ministers, resulting in the abolishment of virtually all non-pharmaceutical interventions such as capacity limits for venues and mask mandates, with protective face coverings continuing to be recommended in indoor spaces and any high risk environments. the decision to drop restrictions has generally been regarded as being in line with the improved epidemiological situation, following the trends in other european countries, though some experts have characterized it as hasty due to the low vaccination coverage of the population and cautioned that it could lead to false sense of calm that the pandemic is over. concerns have also been expressed about the reduction in the testing for the virus. members of the business sector have criticized the declaration of an end to the epidemiological situation as an excuse for the government to stop offering financial compensations. according to a law passed by the national parliament on 13 april 2022, the burden for the introduction of new measures will to an extent shift from the minister of health to the regional health authorities, with the restrictions thus envisioned to be regional rather than nationwide. however, the health minister retains the prerogative to introduce pandemic control measures. in late april 2022, mathematician nikolay vitanov stated that the reproduction number for the virus in bulgaria is 0.82, characterizing the situation in the country as lacking the diffuse spread of western europe, which he believed to have been a factor behind the decision to remove the restrictions. may 2022 from 1 may 2022, the pandemic-related requirements regarding the entry of foreign citizens, such as proof of vaccination, were dropped. june 2022 on 29 june 2022, the ministry of health announced that the presence of the ba.5 subvariant of omicron had been confirmed after genomic sequencing of 88 samples from all over the country taken in the period from 5 may to 3 june. ba.2 was by far the dominant subvariant, accounting for more than 75% of the cases. july 2022 in july 2022, the ba.5 omicron subvariant began emerging as dominant over the other ones, being the most frequently detected in samples. it had spread the most in the capital sofia. on 25 july 2022, face masks once again became compulsory for all citizens using public transport in sofia. august 2022 from 4 august 2022 there was a further tightening of the epidemiological control measures in the capital, with face masks starting to be required for most indoor spaces as well as other requirements pertaining to social distancing, disinfection and capacity limits being introduced. following the appointment of asen medzhidiev as caretaker health minister, from 11 august 2022, the pandemic-related measures in sofia, especially those pertaining to masks, were once again relaxed, and a large amount of free rapid antigen tests were provided. from 25 august 2022, the mask requirement for public transport was dropped. facial coverings remained compulsory in medical settings. october 2022 in october 2022, two additional omicron subvariants - bq.1.1 и bm.1.1 - were confirmed to be present in the country. ba.5x remained the dominant subvariant, being found in around 71% of genomic sequencing samples for the period between 11 september and 12 october. november 2022 in mid november 2022 it was confirmed that from 17 november all public health measures related to covid-19 will be lifted. january 2023 in january 2023 the xbb.1.5 strain was detected for the first time, being discovered in an individual from sofia. statistics cases and tests cases of coronavirus in bulgaria number of confirmed cases on a logarithmic scale daynew casestotal casestotal deathstotal recoveriestotal activetested 8 march 20204400499 9 march 202004004158 10 march 202026006199 11 march 202017106231 12 march 20201623102299 13 march 20208311030 ? 14 march 202010412039183 15 march 202010512049 ? 16 march 202011622060240 17 march 202019812079 ? 18 march 202013942092332 19 march 20201811230109 ? 20 march 20201512731123129 21 march 20203616333157 ? 22 march 20202418733181 ? 23 march 20201420133195 ? 24 march 20201721833212 ? 25 march 20202424234235350 26 march 20202226438253276 27 march 20202929339281 ? 28 march 202038331711313 ? 29 march 202015346814324276 30 march 202013359817334 ? 31 march 202040399817374 ? 1 april 202023422920392566 2 april 2020354571025421390 3 april 2020284851430440350 4 april 2020185031734451400 5 april 2020285312037474252 6 april 2020185492239488299 7 april 2020285772342512496 8 april 2020165932442527498 9 april 2020256182448545494 10 april 2020176352554555 ? 11 april 2020266612862571376 12 april 2020146752968577219 13 april 2020106853271582 ? 14 april 2020287133581597 ? 15 april 20203474736105606 ? 16 april 20205380038122640 ? 17 april 20204684641141664 ? 18 april 2020 32 878 41 153 684 ? 19 april 2020 16 894 42 161 691 500 20 april 20203592943167719424 21 april 20204697545170760345 22 april 2020491,02449174801743 23 april 2020 73 1,097 52 190 855 788 24 april 2020911,188541939411,238 25 april 2020591,247551979951,105 26 april 2020 53 1,300 56 205 1,039 778 27 april 2020631,363582061,0991,128 28 april 2020 36 1,399 58 222 1,119 859 29 april 2020 48 1,447 64 243 1,140 1,156 30 april 2020591,506662661,1741,302 1 may 2020 49 1,555 68 276 1,211 1,126 2 may 2020 39 1,594 72 287 1,235 982 3 may 2020 24 1,618 73 308 1,237 527 4 may 2020 34 1,652 78 321 1,253 1,158 5 may 2020 52 1,704 80 342 1,282 1,465 6 may 2020 74 1,778 84 360 1,334 1,163 7 may 2020 51 1,829 84 384 1,361 1,397 8 may 2020 43 1,872 86 401 1,385 1,777 9 may 2020 49 1,921 90 422 1,409 1,126 10 may 2020 44 1,965 91 444 1,430 403 11 may 2020 25 1,990 93 461 1,436 1,079 12 may 2020 33 2,023 95 476 1,452 1,387 13 may 2020 46 2,069 96 499 1,474 1,388 14 may 2020 31 2,100 99 521 1,480 1,611 15 may 2020 38 2,138 102 545 1,491 1,608 16 may 2020 37 2,175 105 573 1,497 1,161 17 may 2020 36 2,211 108 598 1,505 1,094 18 may 2020 24 2,235 110 612 1,513 362 19 may 2020 24 2,259 112 646 1,501 874 20 may 2020 33 2,292 116 684 1,492 1,432 21 may 2020 39 2,331 120 727 1,484 1,912 22 may 2020 41 2,372 125 769 1,478 1,450 23 may 2020 36 2,408 126 808 1,474 1,605 24 may 2020 19 2,427 130 840 1,457 886 25 may 2020 6 2,433 130 862 1,441 443 26 may 2020 10 2,443 130 880 1,433 295 27 may 2020 17 2,460 133 912 1,415 1,557 28 may 2020 17 2,477 134 965 1,378 1,273 29 may 2020 8 2,485 136 1,015 1,334 1,725 30 may 2020 14 2,499 139 1,064 1,296 1,353 31 may 2020 14 2,513 140 1,074 1,299 606 1 june 2020 6 2,519 140 1,090 1,289 346 2