The Health Protection Agency (HPA), on Tuesday, announced that 134 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in the Maldives, while 82 recovered from the disease.
According to the agency, 110 of the new cases were detected from the Greater Male’ Region, nine were identified in inhabited islands, 13 were from operational resorts, one from a non-operational resort and one from industrial islands.
The country recently recorded a spike in COVID-19 cases, which has been increasing throughout January, with several clusters found in capital Male’ as well as some southern islands and operational resorts.
Currently, the island nation records a total of 16,276 virus cases of which 1,879 are active cases, in addition to 14,337 recoveries and 53 deaths.
With the sudden spike in numbers, HPA announced a curfew from 1200hrs to 0400hrs in the capital region, which was then extended from 1100hrs to 0430hrs, in addition to prohibiting large gatherings, as an attempt to control the spread of the virus.
After a long period of recording low numbers towards the end of 2020, Maldives is now experiencing its third wave of the pandemic, with the introduction of the United Kingdom’s highly contagious virus variant.
With the sudden spike in cases, HPA introduced a new curfew, which prohibits civilians from roads and public spaces between 2300 to 0430 hrs, while vehicle movements are banned between 2030 to 0430 hrs.
The restrictions are implemented across capital Male’, its suburbs Vilimale’ and Hulhumale’, airport island Hulhule’, industrial island Gulhifalhu and landfill island Thilafushi.
During these two weeks, HPA will also implement a ban on parks and other public spaces, with the exception of outdoor gyms which may be used for individual exercise in accordance with virus safety guidelines. Similarly, team sports are also temporarily banned.
On March 12, 2020, WHO classified the spread of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. To date, the new strain of novel coronavirus has infected over 1 billion people and claimed over 2.2 million lives around the world. However, out of those infected, more than 76.9 million people have recovered.
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Source URL: Google News
