The fifth wave of Covid-19 will peak on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. There will be nearly 15,000 daily cases of Covid-19, Professor Penka Petrova, Director of the Institute for Microbiology with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, said for the BNR.

"Although the Omicron coronavirus variant causes less severe disease, the number of Covid-19 deaths has not decreased significantly because of the low vaccination rate in Bulgaria. Currently, coronavirus mortality in Bulgaria equals mortality in Great Britain, which has a population of 68 million people”, the expert further said. "In Japan, a country with a population of 126 million people, the number of Covid-19 deaths amounts to 18,000, whereas the number of Covid-19 deaths in Bulgaria reached 33,121", Professor Petrova went on to say. “The team headed by Professor Andrey Chorbanov has developed a prototype of Covid-19 vaccine. However, clinical trials will take years”, Penka Petrova said.