Maldives reports 53 new Covid-19 cases, 44 recoveries

Maldives reported 53 new Covid-19 infections on Thursday.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) revealed that a majority of the new infections were detected in the Greater Malé Region, at 29 new cases, whereas 17 new cases were discovered from operational resorts, five from residential islands and one each from a liveaboard vessel and an island under development.

The public health authority tested a total of 2,541 samples between 6pm Wednesday and 6pm Thursday, out of which the 53 samples returned positive for Covid-19.

This pushes the country’s Covid-19 tally to 14,765.

With 44 additional recoveries reported by Thursday’s sundown, a total of 13,683 virus-stricken patients in the Maldives have observed full recoveries over the course of the past few months.

Maldives active coronavirus case count currently sits at 1,025, with 74 patients hospitalized for treatment. This means that five Covid-19 patients were moved from hospitals over the past 24 hours.

Healthcare workers in the island nation have collected a total of 376,877 samples for Covid-19 testing, since the pandemic surfaced from a resort on 7 March 2020.

On Thursday morning, authorities reported the 50th death from Covid-19, when a 77-year-old Maldivian man who was rushed to the emergency room of Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) in an unresponsive state, was declared death by doctors at a little past 10am.

Although authorities have been successful in controlling not one but two Covid-19 peaks over the course of the past few months, cases have been surging once again, over which healthcare professionals have been raising concern as it could result in the implementation of stricter measures in order to prevent a third wave.

Maldives received the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine manufactured in India’s Serum Institute on Wednesday afternoon. The first consignment of 100,000 doses under a grant agreement, will cover frontline workers and the elderly, authorities confirm.