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Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Reporter
GOVERNMENT has announced that restaurants will now start serving sit-in customers although under stringent conditions.
According to Level two lockdown provisions, restaurants have all along been serving take away customers.
However, briefing journalists after the 22nd Cabinet matrix on Tuesday, Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Mrs Monica Mutsvangwa said the new regulations were necessitated by a request from the tourism and hospitality sector for a variation of operating conditions.
The new regulations will also see the partial reopening of Safari operators.
“In the tourism and hospitality sector, requests for variations of Operating Conditions in respect of Restaurant Operators and to re-open Safari Operators for local hunting only and National Parks were granted.
“Restaurants will now be allowed to serve sit-in meals at fifty percent of the restaurant’s sitting capacity,” said Minister Mutsvangwa.
The restaurants will also be mandated to adhere to all Covid-19 preventative measures.
Meanwhile, the Minister also revealed that going forward to ensure that the country contains local transmission of the Covid-19 pandemic all those who test positive will now be moved to an identified local isolation centre.
“Given the surge in the number of local transmission of the disease, Cabinet agreed that all those who test positive from both private and public quarantine centres should be moved to an identified isolation centre as a matter of urgency in order to prevent further spread of the pandemic,” said the Minister.
According to the latest statistics provided by the Ministry of Health and Child Care, on Tuesday the country recorded 17 new confirmed positive cases of the Covid-19 pandemic bringing total number of cases recorded in the country to 591.
Of the new cases, 13 were returnees from South Africa, one from Botswana and three local transmissions.
“One of the local cases is a contact of a known confirmed case. Investigations are underway to establish the source of infection if the other two cases.
“To date the total number of confirmed cases is 59, recovered 162, active cases 422 and seven deaths since the onset of the outbreak on 20 March 2020,” reads the update.
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