The Ministry of Health, on Wednesday, announced the extension of the State of Public Health Emergency declared in Maldives due to the COVID-19 pandemic, until March 5.
According to the ministry, the state of emergency was extended as a safety precaution after the Health Protection Agency (HPA)'s Director-General of Public Health Maimoona Aboobakuru expressed the necessity of implementing measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Maldives declared its first-ever state of public health emergency on March 12, under Section 33 of the 7/2012 Public Health Act, over the COVID-19 pandemic for a period of 30 days.
It has since been extended ten times with the last extension taking place on January 4, until until February 5.
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 16,276 virus cases of which 1,879 are active cases, in addition to 14,337 recoveries and 53 deaths.
According to the Health Protection Emergency Operations Centre (HEOC), 30 percent of the recently identified cases are believed to be the highly contagious new variant that emerged in the United Kingdom late last year.
Authorities imposed several new measures after virus cases in the country exceeded the 200 mark on February 1, for the first time since August 2, 2020.
HPA recently announced a two-week curfew from 2300hrs to 0430hrs in the capital region, while vehicle movements are banned between 2030 to 0430 hrs.
During these two weeks, HPA will also implement a ban on parks and other public spaces, with the exception of outdoor gyms which may be used for individual exercise in accordance with virus safety guidelines. Similarly, team sports are also temporarily banned.
Other stringent measures introduced by HPA on Tuesday, coming into effect on February 3, to curb the spread of COVID-19 include a two-week shutdown of colleges and preschools, and daycare centres.
Furthermore, in a new first, HPA mandated individuals permitted to travel from Male' to other islands for essential and urgent purposes, to obtain a negative PCR test 72-hours prior to departure.
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 76.3 million people have recovered.
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