Land borders to open, restaurants to allow indoor seating on weekends from June 1 in Georgia

Georgia will open its land borders and allow restaurants and cafes to receive guests indoors during weekends starting from June 1, Interdepartmental Coordination Council has announced.

Food facilities will now be able to receive guests indoors, although restrictions on social gatherings remain in force, said Giorgi Gibradze, chief of the operational headquarters of the coordinating council.

“We emphasize that the restriction on holding public events such as weddings, banquets and others remains in force”, Gibradze said.

As for the land borders, it will now be possible for individuals with evidence of a full vaccination and a negative PCR test to enter Georgia. Alternatively, visitors will be allowed to enter the country only with a negative PCR test taken within the last 72 hours, however, in this case, a repeat test three days after the entry must be taken.

The partial lifting of restrictions is approached with caution in Georgia, since as of right now, an average of a thousand new cases of COVID-19 recorded daily, and an average mortality rate stands at 30 people per day. However, by the end of May the situation will stabilize, said Amiran Gamkrelidze, director of the National Center for Disease Control, adding that it was with that in mind that the authorities decided to relax the curfew which, from May 17, begins at 23.00 instead of 21.00 and lasts until 05.00.

The vaccination process is slow. This is largely due to the lack of confidence of citizens in the vaccines available in the country, as well as to the poor organization of the vaccination process in general, as many people have to travel hundreds of kilometers in order to get vaccinated.

Georgia is now four vaccines – the German-American Pfizer, the British AstraZeneca, as well as the Chinese Sinopharm and Sinovak.

Only three of them – Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm – are authorized by the World Health Organization.