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 per cent 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 per cent 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 vaccines' effectiveness, even though the shots have been shown to be highly effective in preventing serious illness and deaths.
"I don't believe vaccines work," she told the AP. "I already had the virus. I don't believe it's so dangerous."
But Sibila Marinova, manager of Veliko Tarnovo's intensive care unit, says the full COVID-19 ICU ward in her hospital shows that's simply not true.
"100 per cent of the ICU patients are unvaccinated," she told the AP, adding that staff shortages...
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