Nation owes a debt of gratitude to volunteers in Covid-19 response efforts: president

Maldives is indebted to gratitude for the generous volunteers at the Hulhumalé Medical Facility, who contributed to the government’s response to the pandemic, says President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

In a Twitter post on Friday, the president extended sincere gratitude to everyone who volunteered to work at the facility and extended a helping hand to the government’s health response.

President Solih added that this is exceptional for such a difficult phase of the ongoing pandemic Maldives is currently submerged in.

He added that the whole nation “owes” these workers a “debt of gratitude”, as the country faces brighter days ahead.

A lot of volunteers turned up when authorities sought help as the country got immersed in a devastating fourth wave of the pandemic in late April, challenging capacity at facilities as hospital admissions spiraled like never observed before.

An announcement by the panicked authorities read that they would be accepting volunteers for data collection and other administrative work, even if they did not have the required expertise or required experience to do so. This was done with an aim to ease the load on healthcare workers.

Currently, there are over 700 volunteers working at the Health Emergency Operations Center (HEOC).

The ongoing fourth wave saw single-day infections exceed 2,000 at a point, pushing the active case tally above 24,000, to which authorities responded by strengthening restrictions nationwide.

Since then the caseload has been declining gradually, with less than 100 single-day cases reported across the capital since the past few days.