Police has said that they will begin taking action against lockdown violators from Friday night.

Following the confirmation of a Covid-19 cluster in capital Malé City on Wednesday, a city-wide lockdown was declared for 24 hours and this has since been extended to an additional 14 days.

While a number of people continue to queue up at shops despite the order and delivery services, police said that action will be taken against violators from 8:30pm on Friday and appealed to all to cooperate and “stay at home”.

While violators are to be fined by MVR 1,000, police also warned that they will be sent to a quarantine facility for a 14-day period.

At least three clusters have been confirmed in the country’s congested capital, bringing the number of cases from the city to eight and the total cases in the country to 28.

Five of the eight cases were confirmed on Friday. While three of them are direct contacts of Patient 23 (who is a direct contact of the city’s first confirmed patient), the remaining two are two separate clusters; Patients 27 and 28 tested positive for coronavirus after presenting to the flu clinic, and have no connection to each other the previous confirmed cases.