Armenian Deputy PM Tigran Avinyan says he hopes the country can return to “normal life” by the end of April or early May.

Avinyan, who also heads the country’s State of Emergency Command, said the government has extended the “stay at home” order for another ten days so that nation-wide measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and identify those who have come into contact with those already infected are implemented at a much higher level of effectiveness.

“As we proceed with this process, we will increase the number of tests, and our goal is to reduce restrictions gradually in line with this process,” Avinyan said at a Yerevan press conference today.

Avinyan said the government would strengthen the monitoring of mobility restrictions in the coming days so that there would be no need to extend the state of emergency set to end on April 14.

After April 14, we hope that we will be able to develop such useful devices that will enable us to carry out preventive work effectively. These tools already exist. One of them is a mobile app that will send a SMS message containing a link to self-isolating individuals.  Clicking it, the isolated person will verify their identity with a face recognition tool and location information will be sent to the system,” Avinyan said.