TIRANA, March 2, 2022 – Albanian authorities have decided to lift one of the last prominent pandemic restrictions — the night-time curfew — as the situation shows improvement.
The state’s Technical Committee of Experts decided Wednesday that restrictions on citizens and businesses from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. would be lifted as of March 3.
But the body said indoor masking should continue where distance could not be kept and urged people to continue to be careful.
Health Deputy Minister Mira Rakacolli urged people to get their vaccines and booster shots.
“There is a steady improvement in the country,” she said, adding that the isolation of those found positive with COVID-19 would be lowered to 5 days.
Infectious Diseases Chief Najada Çomo, said that the number of hospitalizations has dropped, and the unvaccinated continued to make up the bulk of those in hospital.
“A month ago, we had 175 patients and now there are 50 hospitalized,” she said. “Despite the fact that we have a decrease in hospitalization, we have deaths every day and if these people were vaccinated, the number of lives lost would be much lower.”
The number of active cases has rapidly declined in the past couple of weeks, but the number of fatalities continues to stay steady as a result of the Omicron variant spike in cases last month.
The night-time curfew was one of the last hard measures observed in Albania as masking continues to be sporadic, with many people not following the rules on paper and going indoors without masks.
