Health Protection Agency (HPA), on Thursday, confirmed that 31 inmates from Hulhumale' Prison tested positive for COVID-19.
As per the agency, a total of 112 inmates and prison staff were tested for the virus after one inmate exhibited COVID-19 symptoms, of which 31 samples came back positive.
All of the positive samples belong to inmates, HPA revealed.
With this development, authorities have isolated the positive cases and their contacts within the prison, which had been placed under lockdown after the first symptomatic case was detected.
The Health Emergency Operations Centre (HEOC) stated that the number of virus cases are spiking because the variant from the United Kingdom (UK) is spreading in Maldives.
Due to the higher contagiousness of the variant, each COVID-19 patient infects five others, HEOC said.
Authorities recently confirmed that Maldives is currently experiencing the third wave of the pandemic, as cases have 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 16,547 virus cases of which 2,014 are active cases, in addition to 14,472 recoveries and 54 deaths.
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