Malé, Maldives – The Health Protections Agency (HPA) has announced that Maldives has confirmed an additional 121 Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours.
102 of the confirmed cases were recorded from the greater Malé area, while four cases were identified from the islands and the remaining 15 cases from operational resorts.
With these 121 confirmed cases, Maldives now has a total 1,879 active cases, summing up the confirmed positive cases to date, to a total of 16,276.
While the recovery case had initially increased rapidly from less than 60 percent to 94 percent, it has now gradually decreased to 88 percent over the past few weeks. This takes the total number recoveries to 14,337 so far.
To date, 53 people have passed away from Covid-19 in Maldives. The deceased are 46 Maldivian nationals, 6 Bangladeshi nationals and a Filipino national.
Over the past week, there has been a surge in the number of daily confirmed Covid-19 cases in Maldives. Spokesperson of Health Emergency Operations Center (HEOC), Dr. Nazla Rafeeg revealed that this shows that Maldives is currently facing the third wave of Covid-19.
Along with the surge in the number of daily confirmed Covid-19 cases, HEOC revealed that the new Covid-19 variant has also been found in the country.
Experts say that the new variant is the cause for the sudden escalation of cases in the Malé city and the same variant has been confirmed in the atolls as well. While the variant has been confirmed to be more contagious, experts in the have UK reported that this variant may be associated with an increased risk of death compared to other variant viruses. However, the CDC has reported that more studies are needed to confirm this finding.
With this, the HEOC has has imposed several restrictions in the country to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus and the new Covid-19 variant. This includes of mandating masks throughout the country, a curfew from 8:30PM in the capital Male’ city, along with a restriction going outside from 11PM to 4:30AM, for 14 days.
In addition to this, all preschools have been ordered to close immediately with universities having to conduct online classes for the upcoming two weeks. Along with this, all sports activities in the Male’ area has also been prohibited until further notice.
