Maafushi, K.Atoll – The Ministry of Tourism has announced the commencement of a Covid-19 vaccination initiative for tourism sector employees of Maafushi Island.
Maafushi Island is the center of budget tourism in the country and has a number of popular guesthouses for tourists. The island is inhabited by locals.
Previous visitors have tested positive for Covid-19, leading to island-wide lockdown, while the Health Protection Agency (HPA) investigated the extent of spread and conducted all necessary evaluations and contact tracing.
Vaccination of Maafushi tourism workers greatly reduces the risk of such incidents repeating, and boosts the confidence of both tourism employs and tourists on their safety. Regaining visitor trust has been declared as an objective of major importance by tourism organizations globally.
This comes a week after the first inoculation program of Maldives began on the 1st of February when President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih inaugurated the launch of the nationwide Covid-19 vaccine program.
The Maldives vaccine priority list includes, frontline workers and social care workers, individuals in the high-risk or the elderly category, followed by resort workers.
The Minister of Tourism of Maldives, Dr. Abdulla Mausoom has said that the government has decided to vaccinate 5,000 frontliners in the resorts of Maldives.
While speaking at an interview, Minister Mausoom informed that the government has reserved 10,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine specifically for the resort workers. As the Covishield vaccine brought to Maldives consists of two separate doses of 0.5 ml each, Minister Mausoom informed that the 10,000 doses can only be administered to 5,000 resort workers.
The vaccination efforts are in line with maintaining Maldives as a safe destination. Maldives has successfully managed to maintain the Covid-19 tourist positivity rate below 0.09 perfect for the months of December 2020 and Jan 2021 consecutively. The country received over 100,000 visitors in 2021.
