The Health Protection Agency (HPA), on Sunday, announced amendments to regulations concerning travel between resorts and inhabited islands amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new mandate requires any workers leaving resorts or liveaboards to ensure that no individuals at the establishment developed any symptoms of COVID-19 within 14 days of the departure of the last tourist.
As per the new regulations, workers may also leave if no individual has exhibited virus-like symptoms in the 14-day period after the last tourist arrived at the establishment.
Additionally, HPA stated that workers may leave resorts or liveaboards placed under monitoring if no suspected COVID-19 cases are identified and no individuals display symptoms within 14 days.
Resorts and liveaboards must submit a consent form to HPA agreeing to permit their employees to leave the place of employment in all of the aforementioned circumstances.
The government banned all travel between resorts and inhabited islands on March 14. The measure, intended to prevent local transmissions of the virus, was extended to liveaboards on March 21.
The travel ban left several resort workers across the archipelago in de facto quarantine for over a month and placed them at high risk of contracting the virus from incoming tourists.
Following the government's decision to halt issuing on-arrival visas from March 27 onward, workers were permitted to leave their place of employment 14 days following the departure of the last tourist at their respective establishments.
On April 13, NEOC revealed that 9,660 individuals residing for work at resorts and liveaboards were given clearance to leave their place of employment after completing the mandatory 14-day period following the final tourist's departure.
Maldives' first confirmed case of COVID-19 from the capital city, Male' was recorded on April 15, involving a local woman who presented to the flu clinic in Malé after developing coronavirus-like symptoms. At present, the country has not identified an index patient for the outbreak.
As of now, Maldives records 52 confirmed and 36 active cases of COVID-19, with a total of 16 recoveries. Of the above, a total of 31 positive cases were found in capital city Male', one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified the spread of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. The novel coronavirus has infected over 2.3 million people and claimed over 161,200 lives around the world. However, out of those infected, more than 606,100 people have recovered.
Sign In