Belgium relaxes quarantine ahead of Christmas

Starting next week, quarantine restrictions will be weakened in Belgium.

All shops are planned to open, but bars and restaurants will remain closed, said Prime Minister Alexander de Cro, writes Politico .

Shops considered to be of secondary importance were closed in Belgium on November 2. They will now work, but people have to shop alone and within 30 minutes. These measures are valid until January 15th.

Museums and swimming pools are rebuilding.

On Christmas Eve, the start of the curfew, which now falls at 22:00, in Wallonia and Brussels will be postponed to midnight.

Households can invite another person to celebrate Christmas, and people who live alone can invite two guests.

On New Year’s Eve, there will be no such relaxation of the rules, fireworks are prohibited.

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Winter trips and trips to the red zones are strongly discouraged. Border controls will be strengthened.

De Cros will ask the governments of Switzerland and Austria to close the ski resorts. So far, both countries oppose these measures.

The relaxation of restrictions is taking place against the background of an improvement in the epidemiological situation – from November 17 to November 23, an average of 2,765 cases of infection were recorded per day, which is less than a week earlier.

As of Saturday, 61 645 535 cases of COVID-19 infection were recorded in the world. This is evidenced by data from an interactive map of the spread of coronavirus from the Center for Systems Research at Johns Hopkins University.

Per day: 670 959 people; died: 1 442 664 people (10 616 per day); recovered: 39 446 275 people (376 462 per day).

In 24 hours, 16,249 new cases of coronavirus were diagnosed in Ukraine. The total number of infected people in the country has risen to 709,701, the Ministry of Health said.

During the day, 184 people died from complications of coronavirus disease. In total, 12,093 deaths have been recorded in the country since the beginning of the pandemic.

Also during this time, 8 897 patients managed to overcome the disease. The total number of people recovered in the country has grown to 335,135 people.