Bulgaria, EU's least vaccinated nation, faces deadly surge

VELIKO TARNOVO, Bulgaria (AP) — Standing outside the rundown public hospital in Bulgaria's northern town of Veliko Tarnovo, the vaccination unit's chief nurse voices a sad reality about her fellow citizens: “They don’t believe in vaccines.”

Bulgaria has one of the highest coronavirus death rates in the 27-nation European Union and is facing a new, rapid surge of infections due to the more infectious delta variant. Despite that, people in this Balkan nation are the most hesitant in the bloc to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Only 20% of adults in Bulgaria, which has a population of 7 million, have so far been fully vaccinated. That puts it last in the EU, which has an average of 69 % fully vaccinated.

“We are open every day,” Yordanka Minekova, the chief vaccination nurse who has worked at the hospital for 35 years, told The Associated Press. “But people who want to be vaccinated are very few.”

Krasimira Nikolova, a 52-year-old restaurant worker, has chosen not to get vaccinated, saying she has doubts over the effectiveness of the available vaccines.

“I don’t believe vaccines work,” she told the AP. “Hospitals are full of people who are vaccinated ... I already had the virus. I don’t believe it’s so dangerous. I have other health issues and if it was that dangerous, I would probably be dead already.”

But Sibila Marinova, manager of Veliko Tarnovo’s intensive care unit, says all 10 beds in its COVID-19 ICU ward are occupied and she feels angry that so many Bulgarians are refusing to get jabbed.

“100% of the ICU patients are unvaccinated,” she told the AP, adding that staff shortages are only piling on more pressure.

Bulgaria has access to all four of the vaccines approved by the EU — Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson&Johnson. But since the start of the...