Marruecos culmina su tercera ola con récord de contagios y más restricciones

In the coming days, Morocco will reach the peak of its third wave of COVID-19 with unprecedentedly high infection rates, which has forced the Moroccan government to impose a series of restrictions that have disrupted the last signs of recovery in some economic activities.

The week in Morocco began with the curfew being brought forward to nine o'clock at night across the country on Tuesday, as well as restrictions on travel to and from the main tourist cities and the closure of gyms and sports centres. The country also passed the 10,000 mark for deaths from COVID and on Friday reached a new record number of daily infections (12,039) with 72 deaths in 24 hours, according to the latest daily balance sheet of the Moroccan Ministry of Health.

These are the highest figures recorded in the country since the start of the pandemic, since Morocco took strict measures last year to help control the spread of the virus, and it comes despite the fact that the country is a leader in vaccination on the African continent.

Doctor Tayeb Hamdi, a specialist in health policies and systems, explained to Efe that the upsurge in cases in recent weeks is due to the lifting of restrictions, which was accompanied by a relaxation in the individual responsibility of citizens to respect the barrier measures.

Added to this is the high and rapid spread of the Deltas variants, which have a reproduction rate up to eight times higher than previous ones. 

"The occupancy rate of intensive care units is at 42.2 per cent, which is a high average and if it reaches two-thirds, our health system will be on the verge of collapse," warns Hamdi, who believes that the trend of infections will increase if the authorities do not take further measures in the coming days.

After a brief period of respite, the Moroccan government has in recent days re-imposed a series of restrictions, such as bringing forward the night-time curfew by two hours (between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.), restricting the capacity of cafés, restaurants and hotels to 75 %, banning meetings and ceremonies for more than 25 people, re-imposing the closure of sports clubs and public baths, and limiting access to the tourist cities of Marrakech, Agadir and Casablanca.

While health experts warn that the country is in a phase of community transmission, professionals in various economic sectors are seeing their hopes of a possible recovery fading.

Noureddine el Harrak, president of the National Association of Café and Restaurant Managers, told Efe: "The visibility of recovery is not clear to us, especially with the continuous increase in the number of daily infections".

More than a year after the pandemic, Harrak pointed out that the sector has still not been able to recover its equilibrium, which according to him has forced almost 25% of cafés to close their doors.

Fouzi Zemrani, a Moroccan tourism professional, shares the same view for the tourism sector, one of the main providers of foreign currency in the country, which has been hit hard by the pandemic with a 69% drop in revenue in the first half of this year.

Morocco announced the opening of its borders to tourists on 15 June, a measure accompanied by a relaxation of restrictions at the time. According to Zemrani, these measures allowed tourism to partially recover its activities, especially in seaside resorts.

However, Zemrani regretted that the latest restrictions have dealt a severe blow to tourism and other services such as tourist transport, catering and events, among others.

Consulted by Efe, several tourism professionals agree that they are having difficulties attracting visitors. "We had several reservations for this week in August, but they have been cancelled, among other reasons after France and Spain (the main suppliers of tourists to Morocco) were put on the high-risk list and those coming from these countries were forced to quarantine," lamented a professional from the southern city of Marrakech.

Moroccan health authorities hope to curb this latest spike in the virus by speeding up the vaccination campaign by opening new vaccination units, extending their opening hours to include every day of the week, as well as widening the age range for vaccinating people aged 18 and over.

Meanwhile, the country is seeking to diversify the vaccines to be administered to the population, as in addition to AstraZeneca and Sinopharm, it has received a batch of some 300,000 doses from Janssen and is negotiating to receive 1.8 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech drug.

So far, 10.7 million people are fully vaccinated in Morocco and those with the first dose now number 14.8 million, representing more than a third of the vaccine-eligible population, and one of the most advanced rates on the African continent.