OSLO (Reuters) – Norway will take the next major step in unwinding restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic on May 27, allowing larger groups of people to meet and the public serving of alcohol until midnight, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on Friday.
“This means that we can advance the work of getting Norway back up to speed,” Solberg told a news conference.
The government last month said the second phase of a four-step plan to unwind the lockdown would likely begin in late May.
Local restrictions will however in some places remain tougher than the national rules to prevent regional flare-ups of the virus.
The country has had some of Europe’s lowest rates of infections and deaths since the start of the pandemic, but tightened measures after a rapid increase in hospitalisations in March triggered by more contagious variants of the coronavirus.
Since then, rates of new infections have declined steadily, raising hopes that the third wave of infections has been brought under control.
(Reporting by Victoria Klesty and Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)
