Covid-19 regulations: masks, gathering and travel restrictions scrapped
Earlier this week, the health department announced that it was reviewing the coronavirus control measures.
Pretoria residents can breathe again – without their masks!
On Wednesday, the health ministry published a notice that the wearing of masks would no longer be mandatory.
Health minister Joe Phaahla published the scrapping of some Covid-19 regulations, including the compulsory wearing of masks in public in the government gazette.
Other rules that were scrapped were the gathering rules.
The government had required that gatherings be limited to 50% of capacity or 1 000 people indoors and 2 000 outdoors if proof of vaccination was not provided. This is no longer necessary.
Existing travel restrictions requiring full vaccination certificates or proof of a negative Covid test have also been abolished.
The notice which was signed on Wednesday read:
“I, Mathume Joseph Phaahla, Minister of Health hereby repeal Regulations 16A, [masks] 16B [gatherings] and 16C [travelling] of the Regulations Relating to the Surveillance and the Control of Notifiable Health Act, 2003) and promulgated on 04 May 2022 under Government Notice, 2060, in their entirety.”
This announcement comes against the backdrop of the health department’s meetings this week with the cabinet and Covid-19 advisory committee comprising health experts to review the regulations.
On Tuesday, a document circulated on social media, presumably authored by the department, proposed scrapping the requirement to wear masks in public following a recent downward trajectory in coronavirus infections in the country.
The health regulations remained when the Disaster Management Act for Covid-19 was lifted at the end of May.
The cabinet and Phaahla were expected to explain the change to the regulations further in a media briefing on Thursday.
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