bne IntelliNews on Georgia's Successful Handling of COVID-19

The Berlin-based business media company "bne IntelliNews" publishes business news and data on emerging markets. The media platform has recently published an article titled “Why is Georgia succeeding with the coronavirus where many Western countries are failing?” The author there discusses Georgia’s successful steps in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus in the country.

Alexander Scrivener of the Eurasia Democratic Security Network who wrote the pieces, suggests a comparison of the Netherlands and Georgia to highlight Georgia’s strategy of handling COVID-19.

“Georgia and the Netherlands are a good comparison as both confirmed their first cases at roughly the same time - Georgia’s first case was a day earlier. At the time of writing, the death toll in Georgia stands at zero, with just 43 confirmed cases, all imported or directly related to imported cases. In the Netherlands, 106 have died and, despite very narrow access to testing, there are 2994 confirmed cases. The Dutch government now considers the outbreak to be unstoppable and has essentially given up on fully suppressing the virus,” reads the article.

The author praises Georgia’s prevention of the virus, saying that “early in the crisis, Georgia took strong measures to prevent and detect imported cases.” He names checking the temperatures of all arrivals, giving out information to all as they entered the country, and creating a special website as good examples of the country’s right strategy. In terms of public hygiene, the author points out that Georgia was faster than many European states to take measures. The author also gives a thumbs-up to Georgia’s decision to close its borders as the crisis escalated in the rest of Europe.

Then the reporter moves on to compare Georgia’s measures with the Netherlands, saying that: “Preventing 'panic' (which there was no evidence of) was prioritized over actually combating the virus. Only when the deaths started mounting did the government begin to act and introduce, largely voluntary, social distancing,” writes the author.

Earlier in the article, when talking about Georgia, he mentions that “all international air traffic was halted with the exception of a few official government flights. All this happened in a country which (at the time of writing) has not seen a single coronavirus death.” 

Read the full article here.

By Nini Dakhundaridze