The National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) has revealed that collecting samples is temporarily halted due to the delay in the testing process.

This was revealed by the spokesperson for the Covid-19 task force, Mohamed Mabrook Aziz during a routinely press briefing on Tuesday afternoon.

As such, Mabrook revealed that authorities have never halted the process of collecting samples and testing them for Covid-19, from individuals identified as contacts of positive patients, in isolation facilities.

As such, Mabrook highlighted that the testing process is being carried out, however, over 1,000 samples have been backlogged due to which active sampling comes to a temporary halt at times.

Due to this authorities are required to wait until pending samples are cleared.

Once the backlog is cleared, authorities with begin collecting samples under the set protocol.

Currently, there are two active laboratories to conduct testing for Covid-19 in the Maldives; the Forensic Laboratory at the Maldives Police Service (MPS) and the Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) laboratory.