The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has ordered authorities to quarantine all migrant workers who have been identified at high-risk of contracting the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) virus.
A directive signed by the Director General of Public Health, Maimoona Aboobakuru and issued on Saturday notes that the virus is spreading steadily across the locked down Greater Malé Region, mostly among migrant workers.
As the authorities believe there is a higher risk of the disease spreading extensively among migrant workers, a set of measures have been implemented.
These measures include:
- Quarantining migrant workers who do not have a place to live or a place of employment, to isolate and monitor them,
- Quarantining migrant workers who reside in high-risk zones being monitored by the Maldives Police Service (MPS) after a mass of migrant workers living in these spaces contracted the virus,
- Quarantining migrant workers who have been exposed to the virus as a direct or indirect contact of an existing case,
- Quarantining migrant workers who are suspected to have been exposed to the risk of contracting the disease,
All of these measures are to be carried out in accordance with orders given by the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC).
Relevant institutions have been ordered to follow and implement these measures accordingly and adhere to instructions given by state institutions in carrying out their responsibilities.
Over 100 expatriate workers have contracted the virus in the Maldives thus far, with a number of cluster cases being of migrant workers. These clusters include the Covid Village cluster as well as the market area cluster.
Earlier, Covid-19 spokesperson Mohamed Mabrook Aziz had revealed that one of the reasons why the lockdown declared across the region was to relocate migrant workers living in congested living spaces and providing better living conditions for them.
As such, the task force’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) team has recommended authorities to carry out this work during the lockdown period, which will remain until May 14.
