ORANJESTAD - The island of Aruba will start easing coronavirus lockdown restrictions this week, the government confirmed on Monday. The curfew will be narrowed to between 12 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. and restaurants will be able to welcome more visitors again, NOS reported.

With the new rules, catering businesses on the island can now remain open until 11 p.m. The ban on groups and meetings has been lifted, but the social distancing and mask-wearing provisions remain in place. Maximum capacity in restaurants allow for up to 8 adults per table inside and 10 adults per table outside.

The number of infections in Aruba has been low for some time, and the number of active cases was 92 on Monday. Some 154,321 people there, including tourists, have tested positive for SARS‑CoV‑2 since the beginning of the pandemic. On the island of about 116,000 inhabitants, 102 people are estimated to have died from Covid-19.

Some 54,000 residents have been given one shot of the two-dose Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that has been administered on the island. Nearly 22,000 of them have already had a chance to receive a second injection. Aruba previously announced they were aiming to achieve a rate of at least 80% of their adult residents vaccinated against Covid-19.

It was reported on Thursday that about half of all adult residents in the Dutch Caribbean islands have now been vaccinated against Covid-19, allowing some of them to begin easing their lockdown.