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The total number of generated ЕU Digital COVID certificates in Bulgaria is almost 1 million. The documents for completed vaccination course are 966 517, and some 16,000 are the certificates for recovered COVID-19, verified by a positive PCR result. The system, that generates ЕU Digital COVID certificates, built by Information Services JSC, started operations on June 1, 2021, 30 days before the Regulation (EU) 2021/953 became mandatory for all EU countries. Our country was among the first 7 Member States in the EU to start issuing ЕU Digital COVID certificates, which allowed Bulgarian citizens to move freely in countries that have integrated their systems ahead of the deadline.
A total of 253,413 COVID certificates of vaccinated or recovered from coronavirus people have already been downloaded without electronic signature. In fact, the number of people who have such document in Bulgaria is bigger, as the common practice is to receive it on paper from GPs or vaccination centers. People can also download an electronic version of the certificate from https://his.bg, through an electronic signature and store it on their mobile devices. So they will not have to print it out or copy it for every trip, which will make it easier for them when traveling abroad.
As of this morning, the European COVID Certificate Generating System, which is part of the NHIS, has the option to generate documents over negative coronavirus test result. The validity of the certificate for negative PCR test is 72 hours, and for antigen - 48 hours from the release of results. The document can be issued by any laboratory that has performed the test and entered the necessary data in the National Health Information System (NHIS). Some of the laboratories that have connected their systems to the NHIS are already successfully issuing certificates for a negative coronavirus test result.
The certificate is already available on the website https://www.his.bg, and can be downloaded by entering the PIN, ID number and National Reference Number, which must be required by the laboratory that performed the test.
There is currently a 6-week grace period for EU countries and the European Economic Area (EEA), which have not integrated their systems with those of the European Commission and are still unable to issue COVID certificates. These are Sweden, the Netherlands, Ireland, Malta, Hungary, Romania and Switzerland. In comparison, Information Services completed the process in mid-May.
"The system for generating European certificates, which was built by Information Services, works flawlessly and we do not expect technical problems," the company’s CEO Ivaylo Filipov said. According to him, our country has done much better than countries, which are usually set as a lead.
As of today, the mobile application, which the authorized institutions use to verify the European digital certificates, is working. The software, developed by Information Services, is installed on all devices that will be used in border health control.
COVID-19 vaccination reservation system reports more than 200,000 reservations for hour and day for vaccination. More than 190,000 of them have already been completed, which is almost 1/4 of all vaccinated. From March 1, 2021 until now, the NHIS website http://www.his.bg reports over 6.5 million visits, with over 820,000 registrations.