The National Taskforce on COVID-19 on Wednesday, April 14, lifted the COVID-19 partial lockdown explaining that the decision was arrived at after discovering a drop in the number of infections.

A statement from the vice president Hussein Abdelbaggi, who chairs the taskforce, reveals that stakeholders had serious deliberations over the matter and made the decision to lift the lockdown, whose expiry was April 4.

The statement read: “After a thorough consultation with stakeholders, it gives me a great pleasure to announce lifting of the COVID-19 partial lockdown that its effectiveness expired on 4th April 2021, following a decrease in Covid-19 infection rate as the National Laboratory announced 16 positive cases for the last 24hrs, a number of infections greater than previous days.

Therefore, I am urging the public to strictly follow the Country’s COVID-19 guidelines to tame further spreading of the virus.”

South Sudan went into a partial lockdown on February 3, when the government also came up with 11 measures to enforce social distancing. The public service vehicles and rakshas were instructed to carry less capacity, boda bodas were to carry loads only and bars and restaurants were closed.

The council of churches then issued a statement on February 7 urging the government to open the places of worship and use a selective approach in controlling the infections.

The statement said, ‘‘The Church acknowledges that there is an increased surge of COVID-19 globally and locally in South Sudan. As such we recommend the recently announced partial lockdown buy the National Taskforce on COVID-19 to mitigate the strength of the second wave in the country.

Banning of Sunday Church services seems to be rather harsh for the church institutions and we appeal  that such restrictions be relaxed for the activities of the church to operate at half normal capacity..’’ South Sudan currently has 10,381 confirmed cases, 10, 148 recoveries and 114 deaths.