Male’, Maldives – Finance Ministry has revealed that government expenditures on COVID-19 has risen to MVR 2.8 billion.
According to the weekly updates on COVID-19 expenditure, the government spent MVR 1.46 billion on health and social sector and MVR 1.49 billion on the economic response by the end of January 14. Weekly expenditure on health and social sector registered a 3.8 percent increase, while expenditure on economic response registered a 1 percent decrease.
Health Ministry and National Social Protection Agency (NSPA) recorded MVR 32.9 million and MVR 21.2 million in expenditure. The bulk of the expenditure by Health Ministry was on supplies and requisites for service provision, and by NSPA was on disbursing income support allowance.
Health officials and the government are currently making all necessary preparations to recover from the pandemic at the earliest. Maldives has accomplished a huge step in the recovery process, in terms of vaccine procurement. Notably, the tourism industry is slowly recovering and the number of daily arrivals are increasing rapidly.
First shipment of the Covid-19 vaccine, Covishield given by the Indian government arrived in Maldives yesterday. The shipment arrived at Velana International Airport on Wednesday afternoon, carrying 100,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India and licensed by Oxford-AstraZeneca.
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to claim lives across the globe, the production and approval of multiple vaccines against the Covid-19 virus continues to rekindle hope among many, especially those who fall under the high risk category of Covid-19.
