Image c/o GCIS
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in an address to the nation on Sunday night that there will be a significant relaxation of lockdown regulations on Monday, 1 June – but tobacco products remain banned.
The whole of South Africa will move to level-3 of the lockdown on 1 June, though various hotspots – including Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal (iLembe municipality), have been identified as coronavirus “hotspots”.
Should it be necessary, any part of the country could be returned to alert levels 4 or 5 if the spread is not contained…
But he said that a third of cumulative cases were recorded in the last week alone.
The move to level 3 on 1 June “will result in the opening up of the economy”, but, he said, “even as we move to alert level 3, there are a few parts of our country where the disease is concentrated and where infections continue to rise.
We will have a differentiated approach to deal with these areas…”
Other than the main cities, these hotspots include the West Coast, Overberg and Winelands municipalities in the Western Cape, Chris Hani municipality in the rural Eastern Cape and the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.
