Interim Prime Minister Oliver Spasovski said that the Government decided to end the evening curfew, starting tomorrow. This means that citizens will be allowed to be outside at any time of the day and night.

Starting Thursday, cafes, restaurants and other hospitality premises will be allowed to open, but only in their patio areas. And starting June 1, the orders to work from home will also be lifted. Workers who are chronically ill and those with children under 10 will also be allowed to work from home, until the kindergartens reopen in the latter case. Macedonian citizens who return home from a trip abroad will no longer be ordered into quarantine, but they will have to be tested for the virus and will go into self-isolation at home, Spasovski said during a press conference this evening.

These recommendations were made earlier today by the Committee on infectious diseases but were followed by a controversy after it was reported that the Committee made the recommendations to abolish most of the corona restrictions because the public was growing tired of them and there was growing sense of disobedience. This comes especially after the month of Ramadan, when many families and mosques ignored the restrictions to hold iftar dinners and prayers. The number of newly discovered cases remains between a dozen and four dozen a day, and the deaths range from 0 to 4 daily.

This is three months since we identified the first case in our country and we are now at a crossroad. Whether we open the businesses, or, if the measures are ignored in the future, we re-introduce severe restrictions in several months. A huge share of the citizens showed great awareness. But sadly, there were those who ignored the measures and even believed that the virus doesn’t exist, said Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce.