Maldives’ Covid-19 situation will improve by the end of Ramadan, says Maldives National University (MNU) Chancellor Dr. Hassan Hameed.

The chancellor made the statement during a virtual meeting of the parliament’s committee on development and national heritage on Monday night, and stressed that we should not lose hope.

Noting that a number of people assume that the crisis will be drawn out, Hameed cited the current Covid-19 situations in other parts of the world in his statement.

As such, he noted that New Zealand has had the biggest success against the fight against Covid-19. Highlighting that the country was under lockdown for 49 days following the pandemic, Hameed said that he predicts that the Maldives’ situation will improve by June 3 as per this scenario. Maldives’ capital was placed under lockdown on April 15, and unauthorized travel between islands was banned shortly after.

He said that things will look up by July 1 in the worst-case scenario, stressing that this is per Italy's experience which he noted had spent the most number of days under lockdown; a total of 79 days.

The chancellor added that there is hope that the situation in Maldives could improve by the end of Ramadan, under the best-case scenario.

Furthermore, Dr. Hameed said that he does not believe that pandemic will prolong and that there is no evidence to say otherwise.

Noting that one should not lose hope over the situation, he emphasized that the asymptomatic cases in Wuhan, China where a Covid-19 case was first detected was at 17.8 percent. However, he said that this is at 54 percent in the Maldives and stressed that this means that majority of the people in the country are not affected even if infected with the virus.

Dr. Hameed also that there was initially a panic over the number of deaths in relation to coronavirus with a reported 3-4 percent mortality rate, but that as per the latest statistics by German scientists the mortality rate is at 0.24 percent.

In addition, the MNU chancellor said that he believes that the country’s Covid-19 peak has already elapsed, and called to not lose hope over the situation but rather to prepare for schools and universities to open shortly after Ramadan.