Emerging Europe: "Georgia’s coronavirus miracle: so far, so good"

Emerging Europe has published an article in which it says that Georgia has long been viewed as one of the most successful emerging economies in the world, a bastion of economic liberalism and a model for others to follow and now the country has been winning plaudits with its successful response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The country, with a population of around 3.7 million, has so far reported just 174 confirmed cases of coronavirus: 28 of those diagnosed with the virus have fully recovered. Just two people have died from Covid-19-related symptoms in the country, a 79-year-old woman with a number of underlying health problems who passed away on April 4, and an 81-year-old woman on April 5", wrote Emerging Europe today.

Emerging Europe wrote that the government of Georgia acted as soon as the country’s first case of coronavirus – a Georgian citizen who had recently returned from Iran – was diagnosed, on February 26. 

The same day, the country’s Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia set up an inter-departmental task force to coordinate the fight against coronavirus, made up of representatives of every major government agency, to manage the situation. The task force’s first decision was to ban flights to and from Iran.

Less than 24 hours later, the task force instructed every ministry to draft an action plan against the coronavirus. Flights to Italy were suspended after a second case, a woman who had recently returned from the country, was discovered on February 28. After a third case of coronavirus was discovered on February 29, schools all over the country were closed. 

Shortly afterwards, stringent lockdown measures were put in place across the country, including a nighttime curfew and the suspension of public transport services, including the closure of the Tbilisi metro".

Since then, the country has imposed a ban on all non-resident foreign citizens entering the country and closed its borders to all but goods vehicles. Georgia halted all passenger air traffic on March 20.

So successful has Georgia been in keeping the virus at bay, that governments around the world are now looking at how the small Caucasus country has managed to control the spread of Covid-19 so well, wrote Emerging Europe.

Read the full story here.