South Africans no longer have to wear masks outdoors.
On Tuesday evening, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced further relaxations to Covid-19 restrictions.
In fact, Ramaphosa says the State of Disaster itself will come to an end soon.
That’ll once public comments are received on draft regulations to manage similar situations.
The deadline for those comments is the 16th of April.
Until then, however, the wearing of masks in indoor public spaces remains the law.
Ramaphosa shared quite specific detail on when they aren’t required.
“We do not need to wear masks when walking on the street or in an open space, when exercising outdoors or when attending an outdoor gathering”.
The President also announced that sport and entertainment venues can now allow entry to up to 50% of their capacity.
The new rules only apply if the venue makes proof of vaccination, or a negative test for COVID-19, a condition of entry.
Venues unwilling to enforce this will remain limited to a 1 000 people indoors, or 2 000 outdoors.
This shifts the emphasis to proof of immunity.
Ramaphosa called it a new approach.
“The approach going forward is that both indoor and outdoor venues can now take up to 50 percent of their capacity provided that the criteria for entrance are proof of vaccination or a COVID test not older than 72 hours”.
