On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.
[6][4] On 28 March, the Acting President closed the border on the river Psou to Russia for foreign citizens and stateless persons.
[18] Two more cases were confirmed on 14 May, one being a Russian university student, and the other being a serviceman from Dagestan stationed in Gudauta, bringing the total to 17.
[26] In October, Abkhaz Defence Minister Vladimir Anua asked Russia to deploy a military field hospital in Abkhazia in order to cope with the pandemic.
[29] During another visit in Moscow, Abkhaz president Aslan Bzhania secured the sending of a batch of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V to Abkhazia.
[30] In January 2021, five hundred doses of the two-dose Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine have been delivered to a Russian military base in Abkhazia.
Early in the pandemic, senior Georgian government officials called on the WHO and other international organisations to provide support to people living in the two breakaways.
Unlike South Ossetia, Abkhazia cooperated to a degree with Georgia, allowing dozens of people to make use of medical services in the Tbilisi-controlled territory, and with international organisations, with the UN Development Programme providing much-needed basic medical supplies and sanitisers.