Addu City, Maldives — The Mayor of Addu City, Abdullah Sodiq (Sobe) has informed that the random samples taken from Addu City do not indicate a community spread.
Addu started collecting random samples on 14 February 2021. Since then, frontliners have been conducting random sampling from 12:00 to 18:00 in all the districts of Addu.
While speaking at the Addu Emergency Operation Centre Press conference, the Mayor informed that from the random samples taken thus far, they cannot confirm a community spread in Addu City, however, he stated that the results of the random samples that came back do not indicate that there is a community spread in the city.
Mayor Sodiq stated that more random samples need to be taken to confirm whether there is a community spread in Addu City and that till then, he instructed all the citizens to continue to adhere to the regulations set by the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
While the curfew in imposed in Addu City from 20:00 to 04:00 was supposed to expire today, Mayor Sodiq informed that the extension of an additional week in the curfew is to collect more random samples from the city so they can ensure that there is no community spread.
Mayor Sodiq further elaborated that compared to the population of Addu City, the amount of random samples tested were relatively less and \more samples needed to be tested to confirm whether there is a community spread.
He stated that while there are currently 341 contacts in quarantine awaiting results for their Covid-19 test and that at a daily rate, at least one of these contacts are testing positive for the virus. This is why more contacts will be traced from the new case and if there is an unknown contact who is asymptomatic for the virus, then the virus could easily spread throughout the community.
Currently the total active cases in the city has gone up to 63, with cases attributed to two different clusters – the Hithadhoo Aviation Cluster and the Hulhumeedhoo MTCC Cluster.
