The Health Protection Agency (HPA), on Tuesday, announced that 99 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in the Maldives, while 73 recovered from the disease.
According to the agency, 82 of the new cases were detected from the Greater Male’ Region, five were identified in inhabited islands and the remaining 12 were from operational resorts.
✳️ COVID-19 : Case Updates
As of 01.02.2021, 06:00 PM
Malé area: 159
Inhabited islands: 8
Operational Resorts: 20
Non-operational Resorts: 27
Live aboard: 1
Islands under development: 0
Industrial islands: 0Total number of cases: 215https://t.co/PjrgTZ4m64 pic.twitter.com/WYkStfmwya
— Health Protection Agency (@HPA_MV) February 1, 2021
This marks a notable decline in positive cases compared to the day before, which saw virus cases in the country exceeded the 200 marks, for the first time since August 2, 2020.
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 16,155 virus cases of which 1,833 are active cases, in addition to 14,263 recoveries and 52 deaths.
With the sudden spike in numbers, HPA announced a curfew from 1200hrs to 0400hrs in the capital region, 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.
Due to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in the Maldives, HPA announced to tighten curfew hours and vehicle movement restrictions across the Greater Male’ Region from February 3 onwards, for a period of 14 days.
The new curfew 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.
Other stringent measures introduced by HPA on Tuesday, coming into effect on February 3, to curb the spread of COVID-19 include a two-week shutdown of colleges and preschools and daycare centres.
Furthermore, in a new first, HPA mandated individuals permitted to travel from Male’ to other islands for essential and urgent purposes, to obtain a negative PCR test 72-hours prior to departure.
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 75.2 million people have recovered.
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Source URL: Google News
