32.4% Vaccinated, PM Says No Need to Make Jabs Mandatory
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Monday, October 25
Over the past week, Georgia saw a surge in the daily Covid-19 cases. Although the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases has increased significantly over the past few days, the number of people getting vaccines has dropped.
Amiran Gamkrelidze, head of the National Center for Disease Control, believes that amid the background of the complicated epidemiological situation and the reduced pace of vaccination, vaccines against coronavirus should become mandatory for certain groups at least.
By the end of the second year of the pandemic, he also talked about a lack of information among the population.
He said that the case about mandatory vaccination should be resolved in November. According to him, some people in the regions of the country have said that they will only get vaccinated if it becomes mandatory.
He said that there could be some kind of barriers and restrictions for people who are not vaccinated in the country. “We can vaccinate about 35-37% people without any restrictions and force, but after that, it can get hard,” said Gamkrelidze.
The number of vaccines administered in a day has decreased dramatically in November. There are about 4-6 thousand covid vaccines administered in the country a day.
The number of fully vaccinated people in the country has only increased by 3 percent. According to the plans of the government, at least 60 percent of the population should be vaccinated by the end of the year.
Amiran Gamkrelidze also came out with the initiative of imposing restrictions for the unvaccinated people in August. The Minister of Health, Ekaterine Tikaradze, still believes that the current epidemiological situation does not provide grounds for imposing additional restrictions.
On the other hand, the Prime Minister of the country, Irakli Garibashvili opposes the idea of mandatory vaccination.
“I want to make it clear that I, as the Chairman of the Coordination Council and the Prime Minister, will not allow mandatory vaccination,” said Garibashvili.
Garibashvili also said that the citizens have the right to free choice. According to him, he did his best to get more than enough vaccines for Georgia on time. “We brought millions of doses of the vaccine; I was personally involved in the negotiation processes. We need to convince our citizens to get the vaccine, not force them”, said Garibashvili.
On Saturday, October 23, 42 people have died because of Covid-19. On Sunday, 43 people died. A total of 7903 were reported in the country, out of this 3436 on Sunday, and 4467 on Saturday.
