Maldives lifts state of public health emergency

Maldives has lifted the state of public health emergency announced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Maldives identified its first COVID-19 case on March 7, 2020, and declared a state of public health emergency over the pandemic less than a week later on March 12, 2020. 

Since then, the duration of the state of public health emergency had been extended multiple times. The last extension order was issued on February 27, and was set to expire on March 30. 

The decision to lift the state of public health emergency was announced by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in an address to the nation on Sunday evening. 

President Solih said he made the decision under advisement of health experts. 

Speaking to the nation, President Solih said that there wasn’t a single family in Maldives which hadn’t felt the impact of COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. He said that there were scores of Maldivians who continued to experience the indirect effects of the pandemic. 

297 people have lost their lives due to COVID-19 in Maldives. 

“I pray that they all receive the blessings of Almighty Allah and find eternal peace in heaven. And I pray that everyone suffering from COVID-19 make a swift recovery,” he said. 

President Solih said that Maldives implemented effective measures in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, resulting in Maldives becoming one of the first countries in the world to manage to control the outbreak, and restart economic and social activities. 

He said that like other countries, Maldives was now focused on protecting high-risk individuals from the disease, and lowering the hospitalization rate and the death rate. 

He said that the government had decided to continue to manage the COVID-19 situation in Maldives to the extent that COVID-19 related services continue uninterrupted. 

President Solih said that many of the countries continued to treat COVID-19 as a scourge, and that it was therefore important to be in a state of preparedness to respond to a dangerous new variant which may emerge in the future. 

“Health Ministry will compile a national strategy and action plan to carry out COVID-19 response in the future,” he said. 

The Public Health Act grants the Health Minister the authority to declare a state of public health emergency either nationwide, or in select areas, if the Director General of Public Health, based on evidence, establishes there to a public health emergency in Maldives, and finds that it warrants special measures to solve or contain it, and counsels the Health Minister as such. 

The declaration of a state of public health emergency in 2020 had marked the first time for the provision on the Public Health Act to be invoked, since the Act’s enactment in 2012. 

Health Ministry has released a declaration signed by the Health Minister Ahmed Naseem, announcing that in light of the high vaccination rate and the drop in hospitalizations, the Director General of Public Health had advised him that the situation no longer required an extension to the state of public health emergency. 

“I, with the powers vested in me under the aforementioned [Public Health] Act, hereby announce the decision to lift the state of public health emergency declared nationwide from March 12, 2020, effective March 13, 2022,” announced Naseem in his declaration.