Maldives sees daily Covid-19 cases drop to 80

Maldives on Saturday reported 80 new cases of Covid-19, pushing the country’s coronavirus total to 75,816.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said that the 80 cases were confirmed from 6,928 samples tested within 24 hours. While 56 of the cases are from residential islands, 16 are from the Greater Male’ Region and eight from resorts.

Further, with the 142 recoveries reported on Saturday, a total of 73,072 patients have recovered from the virus in the island nation.

With these developments, and the 216 deaths reported, Maldives’ Covid-19 active case count has dropped to 2,516 from the previous day’s 2,578.

While HPA also revealed that an additional 12 people were hospitalized for treatment on Saturday, 23 patients are currently receiving care at facilities.

While the government began easing Covid-19 restrictions last year following a decline in cases, the spike of over 1,000 daily cases seen from April was confirmed as a "fourth wave" and forced authorities to strengthen the restrictions especially in the capital.

These measures have been eased thrice since as the country’s Covid-19 situation continued to improve, including lifting of the curfew in the capital, just in time for the Eid-al-Adha and Independence Day holidays.

Fully vaccinated individuals are now able to travel between islands without having to quarantine, after providing a negative PCR test result.

Maldives remains in a state of public health emergency since 12 March 2020 which was last extended to expire on 2 August.