Over 5,000 tourists have arrived in the Maldives within a month since the country opened borders for international travel.

The Maldives Immigration publicized statistics on Sunday, depicting tourism arrivals for the period dated between July 15 – August 15.

As such, a total of 5,177 tourists arrived during this period.

The department revealed that a total of 1,701 arrivals was recorded by the end of July which quickly rose to an additional 3,476 from August 1 – 15.

The highest source market within the period dated August 1 – 15 was from the United Arab Emirates, at 504.

UAE is followed by the United Kingdom with 421 arrivals and the United States of America with 336 arrivals.

Other top source markets include Spain, 250, Russia, 193, France, 174, Ukraine, 150, Germany, 141 and Italy, 106.

Maldives responded to the rising Covid-19 risk in the island nation by shutting down borders on March 27 following which the country’s tourism industry was at a complete standstill for over three months.

The government reopened borders on July 15 under the third phase of the lockdown ease plan implemented on May 29.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the country’s economic growth was hit hard even before the first few cases were reported from a resort on March 7.

Following this, a number of employers had dismissed resort employees and put them on no-pay leave, which affected lives of many.