Iceland this week eased its lockdown rules and venues were allowed to reopen.
Social distancing is now advised rather than required, and many took the first opportunity in six weeks to spend a night out on the town with friends.
Iceland has now moved from ‘emergency phase’ to ‘alert phase’, the second step in a three-stage plan to lift restrictions that have been in place since March.
It is an encouraging sign that plans to relax quarantine rules on June 15 in order to welcome international tourists back into the country will be able to go ahead.
Schools, museums, and hair salons opened earlier this month, and since then just five new infections have been reported. Only three people in Iceland are still known to have the virus.
The country has reported 1,804 cases of Covid-19 throughout the pandemic, with 10 people known to have died as a result of it.
The island nation of just 350,000 inhabitants has been able to test a larger proportion of its citizens for the virus than any other country in the world, with almost 60,000 people (17 per cent of the population) now checked.
“Iceland’s strategy of large-scale testing, tracing and isolating has proven effective so far,” said the Minister for Tourism, Thordis Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadottir.
“We want to build on that experience of creating a safe place for those who want a change of scenery after what has been a tough spring for all of us.”
It fuels hopes that the government’s plan to lift all remaining restrictions by June 21 will go ahead, opening the way for the Icelandic tourism industry – which accounts for roughly 10 per cent of the national GDP – to start its recovery.
