Senegal to re-open mosques and ease other Covid-19 restrictions as cases jump

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Senegalese President Macky Sall announced the re-opening of mosques and churches and the easing of other restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus, even as the largest one-day jump in cases was recorded on Monday.

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Sall ordered places of worship closed in March and imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew.

Since then, the daily pace of new cases has picked up, 177 on Monday from a previous high of 104, with increasing community transmission in hotspots such as the holy city of Touba.

Senegal has recorded 1,886 coronavirus cases in total, including 19 deaths.

Sall, like other leaders in West Africa, has confronted public pressure to find more sustainable ways to balance public health with economic realities in the face of an epidemic that the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned could drag on across Africa for years.

"In the best of cases, COVID-19 will continue to circulate in the country until the month of August, or even September," Sall said in an address to the nation. "In this new phase that will last not a few weRead More – Source