In an exclusive interview with the Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB), Siddhartha Sankar Data, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, Vaccine-preventable diseases and Immunization Programme, spoke about the immunization process in Georgia. He said that no citizen should ask today whether it is worth getting the Covid-19 vaccine.

Siddhartha Sankar Data said he wanted to appreciate the efforts made by the Georgian government, Health Ministry and the National Center for Diseases Control and Public Health (NCDC) in the immunization process.

According to Sankar Data, the level to prepare the country for the acceptance of the vaccine before the arrival of the vaccine was high in Georgia. Georgia became a member of the Covax platform, an essential element that the WHO required from all countries. The relevant institutions evaluated what they had to do and how the vaccine rollout would proceed.

Sankar Data said he had the opportunity to see how the vaccination program was being executed in Tbilisi, and had the chance to talk to the patients at immunization centers. Sankar Data said the lessons learned in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi were important to see what should be done for the next stage and also with respect to the regions, which required a different strategy for approach.

The WHO representative echoed the death fact of a Georgian nurse from Akhaltsikhe and said he sympathized to the family. “No interventions at hundred per percent can be safe. Some kind of sacrifice can always happen. We have seen such cases happening in other countries of the world as well,” he said. He noted that the government showed maximal openness in investigating the case, including with the information provided to the public.

When asked about effectiveness of the available vaccines against the newly emerging virus variants, Siddhartha Sankar Data said two dozes of the currently available vaccines, Pfizer and AstraZeneca showed very good level of effectiveness against existing Covid variants.

“We anticipate that the current vaccines will be effective against some variants of the virus. As things go past, we will see how the variants emerged, but we have to stop the pandemic as soon as possible. The effort for all of us at this point of time is not to deviate attention from rolling out of vaccines to the wider population and to do researches on development of all variants,” he claimed.

According to the WHO representative, everybody has to understand that the virus mutates. “Vaccines alone cannot stop the pandemic. All public and social measures need to remain in place. Public efforts should be doubled and vaccines should reach out all persons. All measures together will end this pandemic,” he claimed.