Bulgaria police to cover virus ambulance shortage

Police in the Bulgarian capital Sofia will help transport coronavirus patients to hospital to cover for a severe shortage of health service ambulances, Health Minister Kostadin Angelov said Monday.

Ten police vehicles will join the 25 health service ambulances currently serving the city of over two million people, Angelov told reporters after talks with the interior ministry.

The 10 vehicles will comprise six ambulances normally only used to treat police officers and four minivans equipped with a driver and a paramedic.

The move came after an outcry on social media caused by the death on Saturday of a 33-year-old coronavirus patient, whose relatives said they waited hours for an ambulance to transport him to hospital after his condition deteriorated.

One doctor quoted in local media complained that on the same day the shortage of beds had led to hospitals refusing to take in patients, giving the example of a patient in a serious condition stranded in an ambulance for two hours.

Emergency services say they are flooded with calls and hospital capacity is under severe strain.

"Emergency doctors are exhausted. We are at war: we need to mobilise all possible resources against the pandemic," Sofia ER spokeswoman Katya Sungarska said on Monday.

Bulgarian hospitals have been hard hit by a rise in infections of medical staff amid a second wave of Covid-19 and have launched appeals for medical students and other volunteers to help.

Many private hospitals have meanwhile refused to admit coronavirus patients, sparking anger.

The health minister has threatened to cut the public funding they receive if they refuse to open at least 10 percent of their capacity for the treatment of coronavirus patients.

Angelov said Monday that this requirement would boost the number of intensive care beds in Sofia from the current 700 to 1,200.

Apart from the police vehicles, health services in Sofia will also receive 17 new ambulances by the end of the week, Angelov added.

Bulgaria, which weathered the first wave of the pandemic in the spring relatively well, is experiencing a harsh second wave.

A surge in the number of new infections over the past week has taken the total from under 38,000 to over 54,000.

The government has meanwhile refused to impose a lockdown with primary schools, restaurants and bars still open.

The country of just under seven million people has so far reported close to 1,300 coronavirus-related deaths.