Association representing shopping mall retailers, cafe and restaurant owners and tourism companies demand that the coronavirus restrictions are relaxed and cite their quickly dropping revenue as reason.

Retailers say that their revenue has dropped by 40 percent and that the number of shoppers is down 60 percent after the Government ordered that only vaccinated citizens can enter shopping malls.

Shop owners made major investments to ensure that they work according to the regulations. Maybe we need other ways to enter the malls, such as using cheap, rapid tests, say retailers from Skopje’s City Mall, the largest mall in the country.

The SKTM tourism chamber also demands that Macedonian citizens who return to the country and are ordered into isolation because they are Covid positive or did not have a test done, should be allowed to take a test within 24 hours. Fear of quarantine after returning home is discouraging tourists.

The Government slightly relaxed the restrictions and allowed restaurants and cafes to open their indoors areas at up to 30 percent of their capacity. Other restrictions remain in place – the most strict of them being the vaccine mandate.