Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan Provided Important Data in the National Assembly Today: Babken Tunyan

Babken Tunyan, a member of the 'My Step' faction of the Armenian National Assembly and chairman of the permanent committee on economic issues, wrote on his Facebook page:

"There is a transmission coefficient of the virus, R, which indicates how many people one infected person, on average, transmits the virus to. If R is greater than 2, each infected person is transmitting the virus to more than 2 other individuals, meaning the virus spreads exponentially. Simply put, this is bad.

About 20 days ago, the R value in Armenia was above 2. After declaring a state of emergency and imposing restrictions, it started to decrease. On April 5, Avinyan announced that R had dropped to 1.4, expressing hope that it would continue to decrease below the value of 1. This would indicate that the spread of the virus is manageable and we could gradually start thinking about easing restrictions and returning to normal life.

Today, Tigran Avinyan stated that R has decreased to between 0.8 and 0.9. Consequently, certain types of economic activities will be permitted. If R can be reduced further—to below 0.5—then we could consider completely lifting the restrictions while maintaining caution and conducting random tests.

In summary, our main goal is to decrease R as quickly as possible (weakening the rate of virus transmission). To achieve this, we only need to stay home and adhere to the rules of the emergency regime. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and the longer we stay home, the sooner we will be able to leave our houses," he wrote.