People's Majlis rejects improving Covid-19 response, votes "no" to developing resource capacity!

The People's Majlis on Wednesday voted to reject an emergency motion calling for the Maldives to increase its resource capacity in order to better shape the nation's pandemic response.

An overwhelming 62 deaths related to Covid-19 have been confirmed in the Maldives in 2021, of which 38 deaths were reported in the ongoing month of May.

The emergency motion submitted to parliament by MP for Maduvvari constituency Adam Shareef, at a time the Maldives has been battling to control a fatal fourth eave of Covid-19 infections. In the vote taken on the motion at parliament on Wednesday, 18 out of 33 MPs were not in favor of passing the bill, which called for swift strengthening of the pandemic response across Maldives. Only 12 MPs voted for the bill, while three members of parliament chose to abstain from the vote.

In submitting the motion, MP for Maduvvari constituency Adam Shareef highlighted that the state of Covid-19 across the Maldives had worsened significantly, with a number of islands placed under monitoring. MP Adam Shareef noted that more and more people were quarantining and testing positive for the virus, and also stressed the concerning increase in number of Covid-19 fatalities reported in the Maldives. In addition to this, he remarked on some of the flaws in the government's pandemic response, noting the huge backlog for test samples that had left many unsure of their Covid-19 status for extended periods of time.

Member of parliament for the Maduvvari constituency Adam Shareef also stated that frontline workers and health professionals were working well above capacity, and had raised concerns that the nation's overburdened healthcare system was on the brink of collapse, with patients not being able to receive the best possible care. Over the past week, reports have surfaced of nurses having to manually ventilate Covid-19 patients for hours, and of asymptomatic Covid-positive doctors and nurses choosing to return to work in order to care for others.

The emergency motion submitted by MP Adam Shareef called for the strengthening of the Maldives' Covid-19 response by increasing resource capacity, including acquisition of human resources, effective innovation, and strengthening existing mechanisms of pandemic detection, control and immunization across the country. The emergency motion called for the nation's pandemic response to be stepped up as quickly as possible as Maldives was now at a critical juncture, in order to percent further loss of life.

Of late, several Covid-19 related deaths are being reported across the country every day, with the admissions and infection rate now the highest it has ever been since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.