COVID-19: Maldives record 105 new cases, 43 recoveries

The Health Protection Agency (HPA), on Thursday, announced that 105 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in Maldives, while 43 recovered from the disease.

According to the agency, 88 of the new cases were detected from the Greater Male' Region, four were identified in inhabited islands, 12 cases were from operational resorts and one from a liveaboard.

This marks the eighth consecutive day that Maldives records daily cases over 100, after a long period of maintaining lower numbers of virus cases.

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.

Currently, the island nation records a total of 15,841 virus cases of which 1,644 are active cases, in addition to 14,139 recoveries and 52 deaths.

Last August, authorities tightened the safety measures implemented in the Greater Male' region, following an alarming upsurge of COVID-19 cases after the state initiated efforts to steer the country towards a 'new normal' with the phased easing of lockdown restrictions. After a long period of recording over 100 daily cases, the numbers fell to two-digits during the most part of September 2020.

Throughout the rest of last year, numbers slipped further down below 50, with a few spikes on rare occasions.

This prompted HPA to ease certain several safety measures imposed to control the spread of COVID-19. These leniencies included 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 and for locals travelling to resorts.

However, cases have been on the rise throughout January 2021, with active cases surpassing the 1,000-mark after months of recording three-digit numbers. New clusters were identified on operational resorts as well as several islands in the south.

On March 12, 2020, WHO classified the spread of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. To date, the new strain of novel coronavirus has infected over 1 billion people and claimed over 2.2 million lives around the world. However, out of those infected, more than 74.5 million people have recovered.