Suspension of municipal transport extended for 2 more weeks, studies to commence in online format
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Wednesday, September 1
Public transport traffic will not resume from September 4. Giorgi Ghibradze, Chief of the Operational Staff at the Interagency Coordination Council, stated about it at a briefing held at the Government Administration.
According to him, due to the epidemiological situation in the country, the resumption of public transport traffic was not considered expedient. The movement of municipal transport will be restricted until September 13, recall that this regulation was imposed on August 14.
As for the education process in schools, it will be resumed remotely from September 15 to October 4, the same regulation will apply to higher and vocational schools. Both the state and private kindergartens will not be able to operate till October 4 either.
According to the Minister of Education Mikheil Chkhenkeli, there will be a differentiated approach. In a town or village where the infection rate will be below 4%, education will resume in classrooms, otherwise, it will continue in the remote format. In either case, parents will still have the option to choose online-schooling, like last year.
As for the universities, since they have individual start dates, the study process will start everywhere in distance mode before October 4, the decision to change the study format will be made according to the epidemiological situation on the ground.
Laboratory and clinical classes for medical university students are an exception and they will be held in-person, with the important reservation that both students and professors are vaccinated with both doses at the time of these activities.
As for the recommendations of UNICEF and WHO regarding the need to resume education in the school building, Chkhenkeli said that he had met with the UNICEF representative in Georgia and that there was full agreement on the issue of children's health.
“The specificity lies in the fact that 90% of the strains in Georgia are Delta, which targets children and young people. I am the first to support the learning process in a natural environment, i.e. in classrooms. Schools are ready in every way and for every scenario. However, the criteria here are completely different, the level of pandemics, and the level of infection is very high,” Chkhenkeli clarified.
The Minister of Education also focused on the issue of teacher vaccination and renewal of the attendance regime: “Even if teachers are 100% vaccinated, if the school is located in an environment, district or city where the infection rate is high, specifically above 4%, there is still a high risk of the virus re-entering the school.”
Georgian health officials have warned several times that they will not recommend in-person studies until new cases of coronavirus will seriously decrease and at least 80% of school personnel are vaccinated. Recall that 46 %of Georgian teachers have been fully vaccinated as of August 30.
Amiran Gamkrelidze, head of the National Center for Disease Control, said at a briefing after the Interagency Coordination Council that the epidemiological situation in the country has started to stabilize in the last 2 weeks due to the introduction of certain restrictions, enforcement and more controls, as well as intensive vaccinations. According to him, for the first time in the last week, today, the positive rate has dropped below 10%, but the number of cases is still high.
According to the data published on the government website stopcov.ge, the positive indicator for the morning of August 31 is: Daily - 10.92 %; Last 7 days - 9.76 %; Last 14 days - 10.26 %.79 patients with COVID-19 died overnight. According to the NCDC, 4778 cases of coronavirus were detected out of 43 741 tests performed in the last 24 hours .
The Deputy Minister of Health of Georgia Tamar Gabunia also informed that, there is a slight stabilization in terms of the spread of the virus in the country, which is evidenced by the rate of new cases. According to her the vaccination program is being actively implemented. Gabunia says that the mobile checkpoints in Tbilisi have been successful, which is why similar checkpoints are planned to be introduced in Rustavi, Kutaisi and Zugdidi as well.
A total of 1 184 306 vaccinations have been given since March 15. 790 542 people have been vaccinated with one dose, (27,7% of the adult population) and 393 764 people are fully vaccinated (13.8 %). According to epidemiologists, at least 60% of the adult population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.
