Page 12 - GEORptApr21

Hotels in Georgian mountain resorts, meanwhile, are to open from February 25 in full compliance with existing epidemiological standards and regulations. Cable transport at the resorts will open from March 8.
Intercity transport in Georgia will be relaunched from February 25.
Restaurants will resume indoors service except on weekends in Batumi from March 1, and in the rest of Georgia from March 8. However, the curfew from 9pm to 5am will remain in force.
Restaurants serving indoors will have to strictly follow established recommendations and standards, which will be strictly controlled by relevant agencies.
Conferences and training courses will entitled to resume from March 1. Gyms will resume operations from March 15 in accordance with regulations.
Preschools, both public and private, will be operational from March 1, with mandatory testing of 20% of staff once every two weeks.
High schools and vocational schools will be able to resume practical and laboratory activities from March 1, and to restore the educational provision in auditoriums from March 15.
Museums and libraries will resume operations from March 1.
Theatres, sports clubs and professional ensembles will be able to resume rehearsals from March 15, and fully resume activities (performances, sports competitions with spectator attendance) from April 1.
Non-food retail trade, including weekends, including both shopping malls and fairs, will resume operations from March 8.
In addition, the coronavirus coordinating council has decided to further ease regulations on the admission of visitors to the country. In particular, the list of countries whose citizens can enter the country with a negative PCR test will be enlarged from March 1 with the addition of several countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Ukraine.
According to the government website stopcov.ge, 2,501 new infections were detected in Georgia on December 7, as a result of which the total number of infections increased to 164,976. The death toll rose by 36. In total, the virus has officially been behind the deaths of 1,540 people in the country.
In the early days of the pandemic, Georgia enjoyed one of the most enviably low infection rates in the world. Things began to fall apart in late summer, however, as Georgians let their guard down on their seaside vacations and the disease began to spread rapidly.
In an attempt to move down from this peak, Georgia announced a reprise of the lockdown that managed to keep the coronavirus in check in the spring. The government imposed a set of tight restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus to be applied between November 28 and March 1, in tandem with a new assistance programme to provide both social and business support.
12 GEORGIA Country Report April 2021 www.intellinews.com