Most of the measures taken at the end of June in South Africa to limit the devastating effects of the Delta variant of Covid-19 will be extended until the end of July, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Sunday evening.
Read also: South Africa seeks to turn around its economy overwhelmed by the Covid-19
But restaurants and sports halls will be able to reopen, if they respect distancing and a certain number of constraints to limit contamination by the coronavirus, he said in a televised speech.
Bars, like schools, remain closed.
The curfew is maintained from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.
The sale of alcohol remains prohibited, to limit the overcrowding of emergencies.
And political and religious gatherings are still banned, he said, at least until July 27.
The measures put in place for two weeks "
were both urgent and absolutely necessary
" to "
break the chains of contamination
", pleaded the president.
And the number of new infections in the most affected African country "
remains very high
", with an average of 20,000 cases per day for the past two weeks and more than 4,200 deaths over this period.
Gauteng, the economic heart of South Africa and the most populous province, which includes Johannesburg, continues to concentrate more than half of new cases, but other provinces are seeing their numbers increase, said Mr. Ramaphosa. .
The highly contagious Delta variant is at the origin of the significant increase in contamination and now dominates infections in the country.
South Africa recorded 16,302 new cases and 151 new deaths on Sunday.
In total, at least 2,195,599 people have been affected by Covid-19, including 64,289 who died from it, for a population of 59 million inhabitants.
South Africa, whose economy was already in recession before the pandemic, had put in place in March 2020 one of the strictest containments in the world.
The vaccination campaign started with difficulty in February and only 4.2 million people have received at least their first dose so far.
