Bulgaria scraps vaccine priority list

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AFP) — Bulgarians of all ages, some as young as 20, joined long queues at hospitals this weekend after low uptake on priority lists led the government to open up vaccinations to everyone.

Fewer than a third of those designated as first in line for Covid-19 jabs have chosen to take up the offer since they became available in late December.

Many of those queueing this weekend were eager to be among the first non-priority Europeans to get vaccinated, after Bulgaria announced Friday that some hospitals would start administering AstraZeneca shots to anyone.

The decision to scrap its original prioritization lists came after Bulgaria recorded the lowest vaccination rate in the European Union (EU) — largely due to worries over side effects and growing distrust of the government and its institutions.

Other people however were happy to take the place of the skeptics.

“To be frank, I did not expect that we’d be allowed to go so quickly,” said Denitsa Valkanova, a healthy 31-year-old who got vaccinated together with her mother.

“Friends who live abroad now tell me they will have to wait for another seven or eight months before anything like this could happen,” she added.

There were 355,000 people in the first two priority groups, which included doctors, nurses and teachers. But of that number, fewer than 100,000 chose to get inoculated.

“Before, we were pleading with people to come and get vaccinated,” said Silvia Cholakova, manager of the Pirogov emergency hospital medical centre in the country’s capital, Sofia.

But since the process has been opened up to all Bulgarians, “the teams are busy to the maximum and we do not turn anyone away,” Cholakova said.

Chaos and distrust

Most people have welcomed the decision, but some analysts have objected that the sudden announcement disrupted the priority group system just as elderly and chronically ill people were next in line.

That meant that over the weekend, these vulnerable groups had to line up for hours in the same queues as healthy people in their twenties.

“The government is great — it unclogged the vaccination through monstrous chaos!” daily newspaper Sega commented Sunday.

By Tuesday however, the lines had become much shorter and medical staff in larger cities reported vaccinations were running smoothly.

Distrust of vaccines is higher among Bulgarians than in other EU countries.