Occupied South Ossetia Reports First Coronavirus Cases

On May 6, Russian-occupied South Ossetia (Tskhinvali region) reported its first three cases of novel coronavirus. Ossetian-owned news agency RES wrote on Wednesday that the man who has tested positive for COVID-19 had returned from Russia on April 30.

"The man has been isolated in the Infectious Diseases Hospital," Chief Medical Officer Marina Kochiyeva reported to RES. As Kochiyeva claimed, “everyone who came in contact with him has also been isolated.”

Within a few hours, “the man” was identified as a 14-year-old boy, a student at the North Caucasus Suvorovskoe Military School in Vladikavkaz.

With the first case came two more - a woman and her 6-year-old son who, according to Kochiyeva, “had traveled to North Ossetia'‘for other medical conditions’ and tested positive upon their return to South Ossetia’s southern Akhalgori (Leningor) District yesterday.” Reportedly, these two patients were then asymptomatic and had been put into quarantine.

By Nini Dakhundaridze