In the authorities’ efforts to increase Maldives capacity to test for the Covid-19 virus, a team of analysts from the Maldives Police Service (MPS) Forensic Department has been working round-the-clock to conduct testing for the disease.

This was revealed by the Commissioner of Police, Mohamed Hameed via Twitter on Monday morning, where he expressed pride in the team.

Shedding light on the work being carried out by the authority to increase testing capacity, CP Hameed revealed that the team, consisting of 12 analysts is using methodology validated on high performance viral extraction & Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) platforms.

Further, four more laboratory technicians from ADK Hospital are also being trained to conduct testing under these efforts.

These are currently only two laboratories to conduct Covid-19 testing in the Maldives, one is located at the state-run Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital and the other is the MPS Forensic Laboratory.

Police are playing a vital role in the frontlines to battle the coronavirus pandemic, with a number of officers even having tested positive for the virus.

As such, out of the 199 frontline workers who tested positive for Covid-19, 23 are police officers and about 300 officers have also been isolated.