Source of 3 cases of coronavirus infection remain unidentified in Georgia
Georgia reported 12 new cases of the coronavirus earlier today, bringing the total number of cases to 230. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
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Deputy Head of the National Disease Control Centre (NCDC) Paata Imnadze says that there are only three cases of coronavirus infection in Georgia for which the source has not been yet identified.
Imnadze said that there are several clusters which are connected to one other, but that so far the source of the infection of three patients has still not been identified.
Georgia reported 12 new cases of the coronavirus earlier today, bringing the total number of cases to 230.
Of the 230, 54 individuals have recovered, three people have died and two others were foreign citizens who left the country last month.
As of today Georgia has 171 active cases of the virus.
To note, the Tbilisi-based Lugar Lab is capable of identifying the origin of certain cases of COVID-19 per its genetic sequence.
Last month thanks to the Lugar Lab the source country of the virus in three cases has been identified.
The technology was unavailable several years ago. The approach looks for genetic changes in the virus and helps scientists answer questions where and how the virus is spreading.
Georgia has reported 12 new cases of the coronavirus earlier today, bringing the total number of cases to 230. Of the 230, 54 individuals have recovered, three people have died and two others were foreign citizens who left the country last month. As of today Georgia has 171 active cases of the virus. Two of the 16 new patients are Georgian truck drivers who tested positive for the virus in Armenia.
Yet another individual has recovered from the coronavirus in Georgia increasing the total number of recoveries to 51. As of now, the country has confirmed a total of 218 cases since February 26, including 162 infected individuals and three deaths.
Prime Minister Giorgi Gakhara has called on Georgian citizens to call 112 if they notice a fever or shortness of breathing.
3,271 individuals have been tested for COVID-19 in Georgia (as of April 7) since January 2020, while the country has had 208 cases so far. A handful of individuals have been tested several times and 3,457 tests have been used in total. In all the cases, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, a gold-standard in epidemiology for detecting viral matter in blood samples, was used. The method takes just several hours to give results, but is highly accurate.