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.
[10] In late February 2021, Politico Europe reported that South Ossetia has allocated the equivalent of $27,000 from its 2021 budget for purchases of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.
[13] 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 Abkhazia, South Ossetia refused to cooperate with Georgia and blocked movement from or to Tbilisi-controlled territory in February 2020.
[13] According to the International Crisis Group, of the fellow ex-Soviet breakaways, South Ossetia is at greatest risk due to high percent of elderly population (17%), severely under-equipped medical facilities, lack of properly trained medical professionals, and failure to procure significant aid from Russia, which generally provides a majority of the region's needs.