The patient who was diagnosed with the new strain had no travel history, said today Paata Imnadze, Deputy Head of the National Center for Disease Control.

“There is no difference in clinical progression between the new and old COVID-19 strains. After the data on a new strain was published, we examined all the positive tests in Georgia to see suspicious positive cases. A suspicious case is if two of the three genes are good positive, while one is not positive. There were three such cases out of a few thousand in Georgia. All other cases that were positive in Georgia were positive for all three genes.

The contacts of these patients have already undergone the 14-day isolation period. Our new mutant strain patient has no travel history. But he had contact with a person who had a travel history before becoming ill. A sample of this person has been found, and sequencing is underway”, - explained Paata Imnadze.