January 22 (SeeNews) - Indoor restaurants, cafes, cinema theatres and gambling spaces in Bucharest will reopen at 30% of their capacity on January 25, as the coronavirus infection rate in the Romanian capital has dropped, city authorities said on Friday.
The facilities will be able to operate from 6am until 9pm, Bucharest Municipality Committee for Emergency Situations, a working group under the city's prefecture, said in a press release.
The decision came as Bucharest registered a coronavirus infection rate below 3 per 1,000 inhabitants for two consecutive days.
Indoor restaurants, cafes, cinemas and gambling halls have been closed since October, when the infection rate peaked at over 3 per 1,000 inhabitants for more than two weeks.
Starting January 13, Romania extended the state of alert introduced to limit the spread of Covid-19 disease by 30 days.
Wearing masks remained compulsory in all public spaces across the country, regardless of the number of new cases in a specific area. Also, all schools remained closed and a national curfew is still in force from 11pm until 5am. Companies where employees cannot work from home are required to change the schedule of employees so that they don't arrive for work in the same time slot and all shops must limit their working hours to 5am-9pm, except for pharmacies and petrol stations.
On Friday, Romanian authorities reported 2,699 new cases of Covid-19 registered in the past 24 hours, bringing the total count to 706,475, out of whom 645,923 have recovered. The death toll since the outbreak of the disease climbed to 17,628, the latest data from the health ministry showed.
Romania started its anti-coronavirus vaccination campaign on December 27. So far, 302,570 people have been vaccinated, according to health ministry data.