“The Maldives Lured Tourists Back. Now It Needs Nurses.” June 18 2021

MALÉ, Maldives — The largest Covid-19 treatment facility in the Maldives has nearly 300 beds and a steady supply of oxygen. But as the country reported some of the world’s highest caseloads per capita last month, Covid wards ran low on another essential resource: employees.

[...]

[T]he Maldives, an archipelago of about 1,200 islands in the Indian Ocean, faces unique challenges. It can’t easily call up masses of students because it has only one university with a school of medicine. And it can’t rely just on its citizens, because its health care system depends largely on foreign workers. Many of those doctors and nurses come from India, a country that is facing its own gargantuan outbreak.

[...]

Though 59 percent of the population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, the recent surge took a heavy toll. Nearly half of the country’s 200 Covid-19 deaths during the entire pandemic were reported in May.