Tbilisi Sends 10,000 Flu Shots to Sokhumi

Head of the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC) Amiran Gamkrelidze said on December 2 that the Georgian Government has sent 10,000 doses of the influenza vaccine to Abkhazia.

“According to data from this morning, 160,000 doses [flu shots] have been used, of which 10,000 doses we transferred to Abkhazia,” Gamkrelidze told reporters during today’s coronavirus task force briefing.

The NCDC Head also reported that the Georgian authorities have purchased 235,000 doses of influenza vaccine to date, while the private sector purchased approximately 60,000-70,000 doses.

Health minister of Moscow-backed Abkhazia Tamaz Tsakhnakia, who promptly denied that Tbilisi sent flu shots, said “it was not the Georgian authorities who handed it [flu shots] over, but the international organization UNICEF, which usually deals with issues of vaccination and medicines.”

Moscow-backed authorities in Abkhazia added 122 new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours to tally of total confirmed cases in the region amounting to 6,092. With 4,002 recoveries and 84 deaths, the number of active cases in the region of less than a quarter million people stands at 2,006.

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