Govt. shifts between testing policy for COVID-19

The testing procedure for COVID-19 in the Maldives has been reverted by the government after an earlier shift.

The policy now will first focus on people who are symptomatic from the contact tracing work and take samples from the remaining contacts that are not deemed as High Risk.

Questions have been posed to the government regarding why samples are not being taken from contacts of a positive case identified in Uligan. The contacts are located on the island of Hirimaradhoo.

In a press conference today, government spokesperson Mabrouq Azeez said that this was due to a shift in policy for testing. Testing is conducted on symptomatic people from the High-Risk contacts under that policy. This was decided as a result of the increase in the number of contacts within just a few days.

“It was a policy preciously implemented to take the samples of direct contacts whether they are High-Risk or Low-Risk, however, due to surge of contacts within the last two days, we decided based on the advice of TAG that the focus of the HPA should be on High-Risk contacts and out of them, those who are symptomatic.” Said Mabrouq.

He announced that the policy has once again been changed and arrangements to collect the samples of those contacts in Hirimaradhoo were also made.

Mabrouq revealed last night that the Maldives had around 3,100 test kits. He added that a further 5000 test kits are to be received from WHO on Thursday. 20,000 kits are also to be supplied from China including 10,000 from the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma. Maldives has so far confirmed 85 cases of the virus along with two probable cases.