Thousands rush to quit Georgia capital ahead of lockdown

Motorways were jammed at the exits from Tbilisi as many families left the city, opting to spend the days of a stringent containment in their country houses.

On Tuesday, Georgia's Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia ordered that a state of emergency and general quarantine imposed last month be extended until May 10, also banning entry to and exit from four major cities -- Tbilisi, Rustavi, Batumi, and Kutaisi -– for 10 days starting on Wednesday evening.

Georgia has so far reported 306 cases of COVID-19 and three deaths, one of the lowest rates in Europe.

But after a record 26 new cases were confirmed on Tuesday, Gakharia said "the country has moved on to the stage of a full-scale internal transmission of the virus."

"It is therefore necessary to tighten the measures even further," he told a news conference.

Under the original quarantine conditions, residents were allowed to use their cars during the daytime, as long as there were no more than three people in a vehicle.

"We have to leave today because the city will be locked down tonight," Tbilisi resident Tinatin Kapanadze, 24, told AFP. "Better to go to the village instead of being locked in a flat."

On Wednesday, Health Minister Ekaterine Tikaradze said Georgia's hospitals would not be able to cope with a large-scale spread of the coronavirus as the tiny country does not have enough intensive care doctors to treat thousands of COVID-19 patients in a severe condition.

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