South Africa’s government will curb alcohol sales and close some of the nation’s beaches at the height of the summer-holiday season, among a series of new restrictions to rein in surging coronavirus infections.

The government declared the start of a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on Dec. 10 as the number of daily new cases doubled this month. The country is fast-approaching 1 million infections, with 866,127 people having contracted the disease so far, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.

The new measures include:

• Restricting alcohol sales to 10 a.m. to 6pm from Monday to Thursday
• Declaring the districts of Garden Route and Sarah Baartman along the south coast coronavirus hotspots
• Closing beaches in the Eastern Cape province from Dec. 16 to Jan. 3 and in KwaZulu-Natal on the busiest days of the festive season
• Extending the nationwide curfew to 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.
• Further limiting the number of people attending public gatherings, with a maximum of 100 people allowed at indoor events, and 250 outdoors.

The renewed efforts to curb the spread of the virus may hamper the recovery of an economy predicted to contract the most in almost nine decades.

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