Businesses with close contact with customers -- mainly hairdressers, tattoo parlours and beauty shops -- will be shut at least until 15 April. Non-essential shops are only open to customers with appointments.
Next week, the last before the two-week Easter break, only nursery schools will remain open, while distance education will be practiced for all other levels, from primary to higher. “The goal is to be able to fully reopen the schools on April 19" after the holidays, said Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
In the new rules, the “outside bubble”, the maximum number of people with which you are allowed to be with in public, will be reduced from 10 to four.
Non-essential travel outside Belgium would remain prohibited until the end of the Easter holidays (18 April included), promising “significantly strengthened” border controls.
With Belgium already subject to a night curfew, a work-from-home edict and a general travel ban into and out of the country, the blame was put on the spread of the UK variant of the virus, which is more contagious and can have more severe effects.
