Lungani Zungu
President Cyril Ramaphosa has eased the lockdown rules to alert level 1 from Thursday midnight.
- Masks are still compulsory in public places
- Alcohol can be sold – until 11pm
- 750 people can now gather inside (compared with 250 before), and 2,000 can be together outside
- The curfew is now midnight to 4am
Ramaphosa said the government is also going to introduce vaccine certificates, which will make it easier to travel and get into places which need to see your vaccine status.
He said more than 17 million people have been vaccinated – with about 8,6 million fully vaccinated. This is more than one-fifth of the adult population.
However, he said this is not enough.
“We have set our target of vaccinating 70% of the adult population in South Africa by the end of the year. To reach our goal we need to administer an additional 16 million vaccine doses this year.”
Ramaphosa said the country has emerged from the third wave, which lasted for 130 days and saw 20,000 new cases a day during its peak. Currently there are 1,800 new cases daily.
As of Thursday 87,626 South Africans had died in the pandemic so far.
