The government of Maldives has repatriated more Bangladeshi nationals from the Maldives.

The country’s national airline, Maldivian repatriated a group of 200 Bangladeshi nationals from Velana International Airport (VIA) on Tuesday afternoon.

This was the 10th repatriation flight of the airline, with the “great collaborative efforts” by the entire team including commercial and reservation teams, said Maldivian.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that the number of Bangladeshi nationals stranded in the Maldives that have been repatriated thus far has surpassed 2,000, on Saturday.

The repatriation exercise is being carried out under a special evacuation programme launched earlier in May, with the collaborative efforts from the Ministry of Economic Development and the Bangladeshi High Commission in Maldives.

The repatriation exercise comes at a time numbers of Bangladeshi nationals have been testing positive for the Covid-19 pandemic in the island nation.

As such, as of Monday, the highest number of confirmed cases in the Maldives have been of Bangladeshi nationals, at 1,027 which is 53.60% of the total case count; 1,916.

The surging number of Bangladeshi nationals testing positive in the Maldives has been a rising concern, with authorities classifying them as vulnerable to the infection due to their lifestyles and the confined spaces they are forced to live in large groups. Groups of them have since been transferred to better living quarters under an initiative of the government.