Testing for Covid-19 began in southernmost Addu City on Sunday.

Addu Equatorial Hospital revealed via a Twitter post that they had processed their first Covid-19 sample at their laboratory from rapid Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) BioFire machine.

The National Emergency Operation Center (NEOC) last week revealed that the BioFire testing machine was installed at the Addu Equatorial Hospital and that the “point of care” machine will conduct 24 tests per day.

With the installation, Addu City has a testing capacity of 100 per day.

On Sunday morning, the Addu Rapid Response teams underwent a thorough refresher-training session where members from all facilities stationed in the city were briefed on adopting the current guidelines on collecting samples, with respect to those in home quarantine.

The southernmost city is the first region outside of the Maldives capital where Covid-19 testing has been made available.

Covid-19 testing is currently being carried out at the National Reference Laboratory at state-run Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH), the Forensic Laboratory of the Maldives Police Services (MPS) and at ADK Hospital.

The country’s testing capacity is currently at nearly 1,000 per day.

The Covid-19 spokesperson, Mohamed Mabrook Aziz earlier revealed that the government is planning to install PCR testing machines at the Regional Hospital in Kulhudhuffushi City in the near future and that 100 – 150 samples may be processed per day in each region, with this development.