Georgia’s health official estimates daily coronavirus case tally at about 10,000

About 10,000 people contract novel coronavirus in Georgia every day, although the country’s official case count stands at approximately 3,000-4,000, the deputy head of Georgia’s National Center for Disease Control, Paata Imnadze, said.

"According to our calculations, about 10,000 new patients emerge all across Georgia every day. This is what is really taking place now. Many of those are symptomless carriers, who do not undergo testing and, therefore, are not registered by our system," he told Georgia’s Rustavi-2 TV channel.

Imnadze said the trend can be observed everywhere in the world today. In his opinion, the overall number of cases is two or three times higher than the official case count.

Minister takes the blame
Meanwhile, Georgian Minister of Health Ekaterine Tikaradze blamed the surge in cases in the country on the ‘liberal approach’ demonstrated by her agency and the government in general this summer.

"We demonstrated quite a liberal approach this summer when we opened the country in full, paving the way for domestic tourism amid fully unrestricted movement. We also honored the constitutional rights of our citizens and held [parliamentary] elections, assuming responsibility for certain consequences this might have entailed. As a result, rallies broke out in the streets, helping the infection to spread," she told Rustavi-2.

When asked who made the mistake by choosing this tactics, the minister assumed the responsibility for being too soft on the issue of preserving the restrictions the country had imposed during the first wave of the infection.

For the past few days, Georigan media have been speculating about the minister’s possible resignation, but Tikaradze said she was not planning to step down.

Coronavirus outbreak in Georgia
The first coronavirus case was confirmed in Georgia on February 26. The country’s authorities declared a state of emergency over the pandemic from March 21 to May 22. From March 31, the Georgian authorities prohibited free movements across the country and imposed a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. From June, Georgia started to gradually ease the restrictions. About 10-30 new cases were registered in the country daily during the summer months.

The epidemic situation in Georgia began to aggravate sharply in September. At present, about 3,000-4,000 new cases of the infection are being registered in the country on a daily basis. On November 22, the daily growth came to 4,048 people which was a record high. In all, during the pandemic in Georgia, 111,818 cases of the coronavirus infection have been detected, with 92,215 recoveries and 1,051 fatalities.

Georgia is in the first place worldwide by the spread of the coronavirus infection per 100,000 people over the past week, one of the country’s leading immunologists, staff member of Georgia’s Center of Allergy and Immunology Bidzina Kulumbegov told TASS on November 24.