The 8th case of the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) has been confirmed in capital city Malé.

This was confirmed by the authority via a Twitter post on Friday, not too long after the 6th and 7th cases were confirmed.

While this patient is also a Maldivian, this raises the number of confirmed cases in the Maldives, to 28.

Authorities are yet to confirm whether the positive case has any links to the two other cluster cases in the capital city.

Eight of the confirmed 28 cases are from the capital and these recent cases are the first documented cases of a community transmission.

The first positive case from the city was discovered early Wednesday morning, and two direct contacts of the Maldivian woman had tested positive as well, one of them is her child and the other is patient 23. The first patient from the Maldives capital had no recent travel history and consulted at the flu clinic in the capital after developing Covid-19-like symptoms.

242 contacts of these three patients are being tested and while 207 of them are contacts of the first two patients, the remaining 35 had come into contact with patient 23, 82 of them have been determined as high-risk contacts and seven are direct contacts of patient 23 while the rest are of the mother and child.