Healthcare official urges public to get Covid-19 jabs, says pandemic not over yet

Tengiz Tsertsvadze, the head of the Infectious Diseases and AIDS Centre in Tbilisi, has urged the public to get their Covid-19 vaccines or its booster doses, saying the pandemic was “not fully over yet”.

In a social media post on Thursday, Tsertsvadze summarised the current situation with the pandemic throughout the world and in Georgia, noting a downward global trend over the past months but adding 300-400 thousand new cases and 1,000-1,500 deaths per day were still being recorded.

He also revealed Covid statistics in Georgia that showed 13 deaths from the virus over the past month, and added fatal cases in recent months had “almost always” occurred in patients who had delayed consultations with doctors or applied to hospitals too late.

In his overall summary of the global situation, Tsertsvadze said European Union countries had detected circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variant sub-lineages BQ.1 over the recent weeks.

Official information released by the European centre for disease prevention and control on October 21 said over 80 percent of SARS-CoV-2 cases were expected to be due to BQ.1/BQ.1.1 by the beginning of 2023.