Iceland’s current limit on the number of people who can gather at one event will be expanded following Merchant’s Weekend (August 1-3) and will likely be raised to a cap of 1,000 people, RÚV reports. Opening hours of bars and entertainment venues will likely be extended at the same time. These were among the announcements at Thursday’s COVID-19 press conference.
Current provisions, which are in effect until July 26, limit gatherings to 500 people or less. Chief Epidemiologist Þórólfur Guðnason says that authorities didn’t plan to increase the number of people to gather until later in the year but said that the pending increase can be credited to the fact that there have been no community infections of the virus in Iceland for two weeks.
Þórólfur noted that no active COVID-19 infections were diagnosed at the border on Wednesday and said that since the borders reopened, 20% of tourists who’ve arrived were from Denmark, 18% from Germany, and 6% from Norway. Icelandic residents made up 15% of arrivals. Seventy people have opted to go into quarantine rather than be tested for the virus upon arrival.
