The Icelandic government announced it would be tightening its Covid-19 restrictions on Tuesday.
From Thursday night, a maximum of 20 people will be allowed to gather instead of the previous 50, and the 2-metre distance rule will be reintroduced. One exception is if all participants do a rapid test beforehand, in which case, up to 200 people are permitted to gather.
Restaurants and pubs will now have to close at 10 pm. Fitness studios and the swimming pools so beloved by Icelanders are now only allowed to operate at 50-per-cent capacity. The new rules will be in force for at least the next three weeks.
Recently, over 300 new cases have been recorded each day on the island, a significant number in a country with a population of just 360,000. Slightly less than half of recent new infections have been attributed to the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
