CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Reuters) – South Africa on Thursday lifted the nighttime curfew put in place to deal with the fourth wave of the coronavirus outbreak mainly caused by the Omicron variant, which it has was the first country to identify just over a month ago, declaring the peak of the wave has passed.
The government said it had made this decision after reading the trajectory of the epidemic, the progress of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign and the reception capacities in the health sector.
“All the indicators suggest that the country could have overcome the peak of the fourth wave at the national level”, it is written in a statement released earlier in the day after an extraordinary council of ministers.
The level of health alert in the country has been lowered to the lowest threshold.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, the weekly average number of coronavirus infections fell 29.7% in the week ending December 25.
In addition to lifting the most restrictive measures, such as the curfew imposed from midnight to 4 a.m. and the ban on the sale of alcohol after 11 p.m., the government has indicated that gatherings in closed places could now bring together up to 1,000 people, and up to 2,000 people for outdoor gatherings.
(Report Wendell Roelf; French version Tangi Salaün, edited by Jean Terzian)
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