Male’, Maldives – Health Emergency Operation Centre (HEOC) has revealed that the first antibody tests, which are to be done to determine the true number of Covid-19 cases recorded in the country, would be administered to school students.
HEOC said that the antibody test will be done in order to find the actual number of people that had Covid-19 in Maldives since there are numerous people who had contracted that virus and recovered from it unknowingly, without any symptoms. They further said that a steady plan has been made to find the actual number of cases and that the plan has already been approved.
Spokesperson of HEOC, Dr.Nazla said that the final preparations have been done to start the antibody testing and that this test will first be done on school students initially, in association with Maldives National University.
“This test needs to be done as a representative sample of all the age categories. Hence, we are starting with the school age category. The testing is to start within this week”, said Dr.Nazla.
Till now, 10,943 people tested positive for Covid-19 in Maldives out of the 170,000 samples taken. It has now been 218 days since the first case of Covid-19 was recorded in Maldives. During this time, 9,783 people have recovered, which is 80 percent of total number of people that tested positive.
Currently there are 1,118 active cases out of which 68 are admitted in hospital. 3 people are being treated in ICUs as well, while 35 .
