Male:  The Maldives government confirmed on Saturday night that an additional 18 individuals tested positive for COVID-19 within 24hrs from Friday to Saturday.

Speaking at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC)'s nightly press conference, President's Office's Undersecretary Mabrouq Abdul Azeez stated that the newly positive cases include 13 Maldivians and 5 foreigners.

Six of the 13 locals are connected to identified clusters, while contact tracing is ongoing for the remaining seven Maldivians, along with two expatriates.

The other three foreigners are connected to the migrant worker who succumbed to COVID-19 at 0930hrs on Saturday morning after being brought to the hospital in the early hours of the day, Mabrouq said.

He also revealed that the number of recoveries recorded for the 24hrs prior to Saturday's sunset is 46.

Noting that the number of recoveries has been significantly higher compared to the number of positive cases identified each day, Mabrouq said that "NEOC does not believe this means COVID-19 is less serious".

He noted that the possibility of detecting more positive cases in the upcoming days are still very real.

Debunking the rumours claiming that the number of positive samples have been lower due to reduced sampling, Mabrouq listed out the number of samples collected along with the number of positive cases for each day of the past week.

A total of 559 samples were collected form 1800hrs of May 30 to 1800hrs of May 31, while the number of people that tested positive were 101 -- the highest daily count of the week.

Mabrouq stated that 975 samples were collected between 1800hrs of May 4 to 1800hrs of May 5, but only 11 individuals tested positive.

The amount of samples collected per day has remained within a range of approximately 550 to 950.

Currently, Maldives records a total of 1,901 cases, out of which 1,130 are active cases of COVID-19. The country records 763 recoveries and eight deaths.

WHO has classified the spread of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. The new strain of novel coronavirus has infected over 6.9 million people and claimed over 400,000 lives around the world. However, out of those infected, 3.3 million people have recovered.

https://edition.mv/news/17108