Health Protection Agency’s (HPA) medical officer Dr Nazla Rafeeq has stated that even though it has been a week since no new cases of COVID-19 have been detected in the Maldives, it is still too early to relax precautionary measures.
13 people have been detected with the virus in the Maldives thus far, out of which 3 have recovered.
In a news conference held on Sunday, Dr Nazla said despite that fact that schools and government offices have been closed for two weeks, the streets of Male’ still seems to be very hectic.
She said it may be because of the recovery of three people and no new case being detected for the past one week.
“However, the Maldives has still not returned to a normal situation, there is a chance that we may find someone infected with the virus at any moment”, said Dr. Nazla, stressing that the public should continue to remain vigilant.
Dr. Nazla pointed out that the spread of the virus had escalated in other countries without warning, which is why the authorities continue to advise social distancing. Hence, in addition to isolating those who had contact with the infected people, the disease can be contained by avoiding social gatherings and staying at home, repeated Nazla.
Reiterating what Nazla said, the government’s spokesperson Mabrook Azeez said although no new case has been detected in the Maldives, we are still not even near reverting to the normal situation.
Indicating to the extent to of speed of the virus spread, Mabrook said, “The most worrying thing about this is that, when we look at the global trend of its spread, it took 90 days to each 100,000, eleven days to reach 200,000 and merely seven days to reach 300,000”.
