Sunday is the last day of the long Pentecost lockdown in Skopje, Tetovo, Stip and Kumanovo. The four cities were placed under curfew on Friday as Macedonia is going through a major second wave of the coronavirus epidemic.

In other cities the curfew begins at 16h each day and this prompted a major flight of people from Skopje to the countryside, which raised fears that the virus will spread across the country. Even Skopje Mayor Petre Silegov left the city he should be running for his villa in the ski resort of Mavrovo.

Following this move, widely seen as a failure, the Committee on infectious diseases will be meeting today to discuss the next steps. Before the new spike, the Committee was pushing for relaxation of measures, in line with the request from the ruling SDSM party to have elections as soon as possible, as SDSM expects that a low turnout “corona elections” will benefit them best.