The Health Protection Agency, on Wednesday, placed Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll’s Thinadhoo under monitoring after two individuals who travelled from the island tested positive for COVID-19.
According to Thinadhoo Island Council, a team from the Ministry of Gender, Family and Social Services had recently visited the island with a special permit granted by HPA.
“We had no knowledge that they came here. So we just found out that some people travelled to this island and tested positive afterwards”, a council member told local media Mihaaru.
According to HPA, two of the people from the aforementioned group were identified as positive casea after they were tested for COVID-19 upon their arrival to the capital.
Due to this, authorities are currently conducting the contact tracing process and collecting random samples to determine whether an outbreak is present.
Two weeks ago, a representative of the Ministry of Environment also tested positive for the virus after travelling to Faafu Atoll’s Nilandhoo. Approximately 30 individuals were isolated from the island due to the incident.
The country recently recorded a spike in COVID-19 cases, which has been increasing throughout January, with several clusters found in capital Male’ as well as some southern islands and operational resorts.
Currently, the island nation records a total of 16,155 virus cases of which 1,833 are active cases, in addition to 14,263 recoveries and 53 deaths.
With the sudden spike in numbers, HPA announced a curfew from 1200hrs to 0400hrs in the capital region, in addition to prohibiting large gatherings, as an attempt to control the spread of the virus.
After a long period of recording low numbers towards the end of 2020, Maldives is now experiencing its third wave of the pandemic, with the introduction of the United Kingdom’s highly contagious virus variant.
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