With an additional death reported on Friday, Maldives’ Covid-19 death toll has risen to 216.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said that the patient, a 49-year-old local man, passed away while receiving treatment at the Hulhumale’ Medical Facility (HMF) early Friday morning.

While this pushes the country's death toll to 216, this was the fifth Covid-19 fatality reported this July and the second one this week.

The island nation reported the highest number of deaths in a single month since the pandemic began, in May 2021, when a total of 88 deaths were confirmed. 50 deaths were reported in June.

With daily Covid-19 cases soaring above 1,000 at the start of May, authorities responded by strengthening Covid-19 precautionary measures and guidelines in place. While this led to a decline in cases, some of the restrictions announced in May have been eased.

Maldives has reported a total of 75,622 Covid-19 cases since the first one was detected in March 2020. And with the 72,833 recoveries recorded, there are less than 3,000 active cases across the island nation currently with 14 patients receiving treatment at medical facilities.

The latest government daily figures also show that a total of 320,059 people had a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine while 251,232 had their second dose by Wednesday.