Wedding ceremony cluster increases to 41 cases: HEOC

The Health Emergency Operations Centre (HEOC), on Sunday, revealed that a total of 41 individuals were confirmed to have COVID-19 from the cluster identified following a wedding ceremony at the Society for Health Education (SHE) building in the capital city of Male'.

According to HEOC, the gathering of approximately 120 individuals was held in a poorly ventilated hall on December 20.

Noting that four high risk individuals were among the positive cases, HEOC spokesperson and Health Protection Agency (HPA)'s Medical Officer Dr Nazla Rafeeq assured that further contact tracing and sample collection efforts were underway.

At present, a total of 116 individuals have been identified as contacts.

Dr Nazla went on to reiterate the centre's request for all attendees to contact HPA at 1676 and provide relevant information, and self-isolate in their homes as a precaution.

Maldives currently records a total of 13,644 virus cases of which 517 are active cases, in addition to 13,072 recoveries and 48 deaths.

After a long period of recording over 100 daily cases during Maldives second surge of COVID-19, numbers fell to two-digits during the most part of September. Throughout October the numbers had slipped further down below 50, with a few spikes on rare occasions, including the recent spikes as a result of four new virus clusters.

Within this same period, the number of recoveries saw a significant increase, bringing the number of recovered cases to over 94 percent.

In response to the sustained decrease in cases, HPA recently eased several safety measures imposed to control the spread of COVID-19. These leniencies include the cancellation of the city-wide curfew over the greater Male’ region, the reduction of quarantine periods to 10 days as well as cancelling mandatory quarantine for locals returning to Maldives or travelling to resorts.

Despite the sustained decrease in virus cases, the agency has renewed calls for citizens to adhere to protective measures to contain the spread of the virus, cautioning against a public sentiment that the outbreak has been “controlled”.

On March 12, WHO classified the spread of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. To date, the new strain of novel coronavirus has infected over 81.1 million people and claimed over 1.7 million lives around the world. However, out of those infected, more than 57.3 million people have recovered.