Authorities have denied claims that the Addu Equatorial Hospital does not have enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for its staff.

The hospital’s manager had, at a press conference on Saturday afternoon, said that have received the equipment but that it was not enough for the frontline workers.

However, at Saturday night’s press briefing at the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC), Covid-19 taskforce’s spokesperson Mohamed Mabrook Aziz said that he had inquired on this, and provided details of the PPEs in stock at the hospital.

As such, he said that the hospital currently had 280 surgical gowns in stock, as well as 15 boxes of surgical masks (1,300 masks in total) and 133 sanitizer bottles.

The issue arose after a patient that was transferred from the Addu Equatorial Hospital to Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH), tested positive for Covid-19. The hospital is to have said that the healthcare professionals that attended to the patient had not worn PPE.

Mabrook said that this would be a violation of the standard operating procedures, and that it will be investigated if true.

Authorities have since announced that the patient from Addu City has been confirmed negative to Covid-19, after carrying out two additional tests.

However, contact tracing was done following the initial test result, and a number of people including doctors and nurses at the Addu Equatorial Hospital were placed under isolation. A 14-day lockdown was also imposed in the city.