SA hits level 1

President Cyril Ramaphosa has cautioned South Africans to be more vigilant against Covid-19 as the country shifts to lockdown alert level 1 due to a drop in virus infections.

In his announcement last night, Ramaphosa said it was important to return the country’s economy to normal as the lockdown had negatively affected this.

He said the country had seen a drastic drop in daily infections in the past eight weeks.

“Because the new variant is transmitted more easily, it has the potential to infect more people, place a greater strain on our health system and lead to a greater loss of life,” Ramaphosa said.

“Therefore, social distancing is even more critical.”

Some of the new changes include a 12am to 4am curfew, selling of alcohol will be permitted throughout the week except during curfew hours, social, religious, political and cultural gatherings will also be allowed but the people allowed at any of these will be limited to 100 people indoors and 250 people outdoors.

Night vigils or other gatherings before or after funerals are still not permitted and nightclubs will remain closed, while 33 land border posts closed in December will remain closed and the other 20 will remain open.

Only five airports will operate for international travel — OR Tambo, Cape Town, King Shaka, Kruger Mpumalanga and Lanseria.

Wearing of masks remains mandatory.

“We will only be able to ultimately overcome the pandemic if we continue to practise all the other prevention measures as well,” Ramaphosa said.

“We must do all this both so that we defeat the pandemic and so that we can accelerate our economic recovery.

“We must do this to restore our country to growth and get people back into work.

“Even as economic activity returns, even as we roll out our employment stimulus and infrastructure investment programmes, even as we undertake economic reforms with greater urgency, many businesses are still struggling.”