Omicron was bad news for South Africa—and for the rest of world—but the night curfew now stands removed in little over a month when the country first reported the new Covid-19 variant.
The authorities said in a statement: ““The curfew will be lifted. There will therefore be no restrictions on the hours of movement of people.
“Gatherings are restricted to no more than 1,000 people indoors and no more than 2,000 people outdoors. Where the venue is too small to accommodate these numbers with appropriate social distancing, then no more than 50 per cent of the capacity of the venue may be used. All other restrictions remain in place.”
South Africa has dropped to the lowest of the Covid-19 alert levels, just weeks after alerting the World Health Organization about the Omicron variant on November 24.
According to authorities, all evidence suggests that country may have passed the height of the Fourth Wave at a national level with instances declining in all but two of the country’s nine provinces during the previous week.
“While the Omicron variant is highly transmissible, there has been lower rates of hospitalization than in previous waves,” the statement read, adding that the wave caused by the new variant has resulted in a “marginal increase” in deaths.
So far, 32 per cent of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine (Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer-BioNTech).
