Gamkrelidze calls on students to get vaccinated in order to continue offline classes from October
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Monday, September 6
Amiran Gamkrelidze, head of the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), calls on students to get vaccinated. Gamkrelidze told Rustavi 2 that in September and October vaccination should be intensified. The country's chief epidemiologist is also calling on parents of schoolchildren to get vaccinated.
He also said that it is especially important for teachers and professors to get vaccinated in order to open schools and universities. Gamkrelidze said that one of the main processes in the country is to continue offline studies, and as he says, for this, a high number of vaccinations is very important.
According to the decision of the Coordination Council, the schools and universities will start online classes until October. In October, depending on the epidemiological situation in the country, as well as the number of people vaccinated, the schools and universities should start offline classes.
According to Amiran Gamkrelidze, education in many schools must resume on October 4.
“We are implementing a big project together with the Ministry of Education. Differentiated 400-500 schools have been selected so far in regions where internet access is low and there, we want the offline studies to continue as fast as possible,” said Gamkrelidze.
He also talked about the importance of testing teachers and said that they will be using either PCR or fast antigen tests for these schools.
As of now, there still are several thousand cases confirmed in Georgia every single day. The number of people dying of the virus has increased drastically, with over 70 deaths being over the last few days on a daily basis.
As for the vaccination process, Gamkrelidze and other epidemiologists of the country are saying that September and October should be very fast in terms of vaccinating the population. As of now, the country is vaccinating over 20,000 people every day, however, Gamkrelidze said with Formula a few days back that the country could vaccinate 40,000, or even more people every day.
As of now, Georgia is using four vaccines: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, and Sinovac. In addition, Georgia is expecting additional doses of vaccines to arrive in the country in September and October. Georgia will also receive the J&J vaccine, which is a one-dose vaccine.
Georgia administered a total of 1,314,104 doses of vaccines in total. The number of fully vaccinated people is over 475,748. According to the information of NCDC, 838,356 people have already received at least one dose of the vaccine, which is 29.4% of the population.
