UPDATE1 – SA moves to alert level 1
International travel to resume, curfew eased
CAPE TOWN, September 16 (ANA) – President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday announced that South Africa would move to Covid-19 lockdown alert level 1, signalling the easing of international travel restrictions and the country’s night-time curfew.
“Cabinet decided this morning that the country should now move to alert level 1,” he said, in a televised address.
The transition would happen at midnight on Sunday and was prompted by a steady decline in the infection rate and easing of pressure on the health services.
“With the further progress we have made as infections have come down we are now ready for a new phase in our response to the pandemic,” Ramaphosa said.
“It is time to move to what will become our new normal. It is now time to remove as many restrictions on economic and social activity as it is reasonably safe to do.”
Ramaphosa said international leisure travel would resume from October 1, but only from the international airports in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. Likewise, those arriving by land will only be allowed to use one of the border posts that remained operational during lockdown.
Travellers would be required to present a Covid-19 negative test result that was no older than 72 hours.
They would be screened and those with symptoms would be quarantined. All those who failed to present negative recent test results would be quarantined at their own cost, the president said.
Travel may be restricted to and from certain countries with high infections rates, he added, but South African missions abroad would reopen for visa applications.
The curfew would be shortened from midnight to 4am. The number of people allowed to attend funerals would be doubled to 100, and places of worship would be allowed to operate at half capacity. However, the maximum number allowed indoors would be 250, and outdoors 500.
The same rules applied for political gatherings.
Night-time vigils remained prohibited.
Gyms and theatres would also be allowed to be filled to half their normal capacity, but the existing restrictions on sporting events would remain in place.
However, restrictions on the sale of alcohol would be eased slightly to allow trade on Fridays to resume, but again only between 9am and 5pm.
Ramaphosa acknowledged that six months of restrictions had had a severe toll on the country.
“Our economy and our society have suffered great devastation. We have endured a fierce and destructive storm,” he said.
He said the government was concerned about a second wave of infections, and warned that the country could not afford the blow to the economy.
“Our greatest challenge now is to ensure that we do not experience a new surge in infections. Several countries in the world have been hit by a second wave, or a new resurgence. We want to avoid this.
“A second wave would be destructive to our country and would again disrupt our lives and our livelihoods.”
The government was therefore preparing for a second surge and had decided to keep increasing the testing rate for the virus.
He said the health services now had sufficient capacity to test all hospital patients and all hospital outpatients with symptoms, as well as people who had been in close contact with carriers of the virus.
The announcement came as the latest count of Covid-19 infections stood at 651,521, with 15,641 fatalities.
Ramaphosa said whereas the country recorded 12,000 new cases a day two months ago, the number of daily new infections had now dropped by about 80 percent.
“It seemed quite alarming and it was, now we are recording on average less than 2,000 cases a day.”
He said the current recovery rate was 89 percent and it could improve to around 98 percent.
– African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Desiree Erasmus
