220 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Bulgaria

The head of the coronavirus crisis response team General Ventsislav Mutafchiyski announced today two new cases of COVID-19 in the country, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 220, including three fatalities.

Yesterday a new crisis team of experts was established to advise the task force and the Council of Ministers on the disease and it will give press briefings twice a week. During the conference to introduce the new body and its members, one of them, Dr. Atanas Mangarov criticized the crisis response team for failing to implement mass testing. The first order of business of the new team of experts will be to develop an algorithm for mass screening.

Meanwhile, PM Boyko Borissov announced the government will free 4,5 billion leva for a new set of financial and social security measures to cope with the economic aspect of the crisis.

The 200 million will be used to guarantee fast loans of up to 1500 leva. Those are meant to help people who have temporarily lost their jobs.

500 million leva will be used to help banks ease terms of loans and guarantee 2 billion leva worth of loans.

Earlier the government announced over a billion will be used to finance the measure for the state to cover 60% of workers’ wages if their company has been forced to shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The emergency measure to extend the deadline of the corporate tax will cost six million leva

The rest will be allocated for salaries in the most affected state institutions – Ministry of Health, Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior.