"I rubbed my hand and after several hours I saw that it's covered with sores," he said. "It turned out that a cow that died of anthrax was buried nearby. They conducted a check and found out it was buried not deeply enough."

Most of the cases this year have been registered in eastern Georgia near the border with Azerbaijan, but the infection has spread to other regions as well.

Dzhemal Kaldani, 49, a resident of the village of Lemshveniera in the Gardaban region that borders Azerbaijan, said he got sick after helping a neighbor to cut a dead cow. "We had no idea that the cow had anthrax," he said, showing his arms still covered with sores.

Kaldani said that authorities quickly vaccinated all cows in the region following several anthrax cases.