TIRANA – North Macedonia’s government said it has decided to re-impose curfew in several cities from Thursday night to Monday morning after a sharp rise in the number of confirmed coronavirus infections.
The extended weekend lockdown, starting Thursday at 9 pm and ending Monday at 5 am, will be in force in Skopje, Kumanovo, Lipkovo, Stip and Tetovo, among other places, the government said in a statement on Wednesday as quoted by SeeNews on Thursday.
In the rest of the country, different curfew hours will be enforced, with movement to be restricted from 4 pm to 5 am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Thursday, the curfew will start at 9 pm and end at 5 am the next day.
North Macedonia confirmed 101 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, increasing the total count to 2,492. So far, 145 people have died from the infection, health ministry data shows.
At the end of May, President Stevo Pendarovski extended the state of emergency by a further fortnight until mid-June.
Since the start of the pandemic, a total of 2,492 people have been infected of whom 1604 have since recovered. The country has marked 145 deaths and has 742 active cases.
According to Balkan Insight, following criticism that government early scrapped measures and reopened restaurants in late May, turned a blind eye to mass gatherings during the recent previous holidays of Orthodox Easter and Ramadan, Health Minister Venko Filipče avoided taking direct responsibility.
Filipče accused the Interior Ministry of not property policing respect for safety measures on the ground, but also he blamed citizens for loosening discipline.
After the provisional government in which the Social Democrats, SDSM, have the main say, passed the decision, the main opposition VMRO/DPMNE party repeated its demand for elections to be held later rather than sooner, insisting that the country is not out of the woods when it comes to the Coronavirus and that holding elections soon could increase the risk. (Compiled from wires/argumentum.al)
