Poland loosens Covid restrictions in most provinces, reopening primary schools and beauty salons

Poland will loosen coronavirus restrictions in 11 of Poland’s 16 provinces from Monday. The youngest three years in primary school will return to some in-person classes while beauty and hair salons will be allowed to reopen.

In the remaining five provinces, all current rules remain in place. A more detailed plan setting out the further loosening of restrictions in May will be released next week.

Announcing the new rules on Wednesday, health minister Adam Niedzielski noted that infections have been falling since the beginning of this month. The numbers of deaths and of hospitalised patients, which both lag behind infections, have also started to drop more recently.

“But infections and hospitalisations remain high,” warned Niedzielski. Today’s figures showed almost 14,000 new COVID-19 cases and 740 deaths. The latter is Poland’s third highest ever daily death number. Almost 31,000 patients are hospitalised, including 3,265 requiring ventilators.

However, thanks to “the responsibility of Poles and growing number of people vaccinated against COVID-19…we can loosen some restrictions in the 11 provinces with the lowest average daily number of infections”, said the government in a statement.

Those provinces, which are listed in full at the bottom of this article, include the one in which Warsaw is located, as well those containing the cities of Kraków, Gdańsk, Lublin, Szczecin and Białystok. However, the provinces around Łódź, Poznań, Wrocław and Katowice will see restrictions remain in place.

In the 11 provinces where rules are being relaxed, from 26 April the youngest three years of primary schools (aged between 6 and 10 years) will be allowed to return to “hybrid learning” – meaning a combination of online and in-person classes. Hair and beauty salons can open from the same day with sanitary rules in place.

All other restrictions remain in place, including the closure of hotels, gyms, cultural institutions and many shops; compulsory masking in public; and limits on numbers allowed to enter churches and shops.

Last week, the government began the process of loosening restrictions by allowing nurseries and preschools to reopen, as well as groups of up to 25 people to practise sport outdoors.

Yesterday, the government also announced an acceleration of its vaccine rollout. All adults will be able to register for jabs by 9 May at the latest. As of yesterday, Poland had administered 24.34 vaccine doses per 100 people, compared to an EU-wide figure of 26.49.

Provinces with partial easing of restrictions: Podlasie, Podkarpackie, Warmia-Masuria, Lublin, Pomerania, Lubusz, Świętokrzyskie, Masovia, Kujawy-Pomerania, West Pomerania and Lesser Poland.

Provinces with all restrictions remaining in place: Silesia, Lower Silesia, Greater Poland, Łódź and Opole.

Main image credit: Adam Guz/KPRM (under BY-NC-NC-ND 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.