Number of daily Covid-19 cases increase in Georgia
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Monday, October 18
Over the past few weeks, Covid-19 cases have been increasing in the country. For the past few days, Georgia has reported over 4,000 cases of the coronavirus on a daily basis.
As the numbers of confirmed Covid-19 cases increase in Georgia, epidemiologists talk about the severity of the situation in the country. The head of the National Center of Disease Control, Amiran Gamkrelidze, November will be ‘very harsh’ for Georgia.
“When the reproduction index is at 1.8, it is very alarming. This means that the spread is very fast, so it is expected that the epidemic situation will worsen,” said Gamkrelidze.
He said the only solution is vaccination and adherence to regulations. “Everyone should wear masks wherever they are,” Amiran Gamkrelidze said, adding that it was necessary to “keep our distance and avoid any large gatherings, for whatever reason.”
Gamkrelidze also said that it is impossible to get out of the situation without vaccination. He said that the country is still far from the desired 60% vaccination, saying that without vaccination, Georgia will have such waves every two months.
The Ministry of Education of Georgia has issued a statement saying that due to the increasing number of Covid-19 cases, tens of schools and hundreds of classes had to move onto online classes.
According to the agency, 108 schools and 687 separate classes have switched to distance learning throughout Georgia over the past week.
“In the event of Covid-19 detection, schools will act on the recommendation of healthcare professionals to prevent internal spread, and a separate class or school will immediately switch to distance learning,” reads the statement of the Ministry of Education.
According to last week's data, the virus was confirmed in 0.9% of teachers and 0.6% of students. 69% of teachers and school administrative staff have been fully vaccinated.
NCDC of Georgia issued a statement saying that on Saturday, only 4,681 doses of the Covid-19 vaccines have been administered, which is a very low number. According to the official data, 1,911,877 jabs have been administered in Georgia as of October 17.
In general, since the beginning of the month, the number of vaccines administrated has been below 10,000. NCDC has noted that it is vital for the country to administer at least 30,000 doses for swift vaccination. Vaccination in Georgia started on March 15 and as of now, a little over 800 thousand people have received both jabs, which is only 31.5% of the population.
On Sunday, Georgia reported 4581 cases, a total of 46,123 tests were taken. The number of confirmed Covid cases was 5,076 on Saturday, with almost 63,000 tests taken. The number of people dead because of Covid-19 is increasing very fast as well. In total, 9,468 people have died because of Covid-19 in the country.
