By Susitha Fernando

Colombo, Jul 10 (IANS): Sri Lanka on Saturday further relaxed Covid-19 restrictions and allowed to conduct weddings, funerals with limited capacity and opened cinemas and places of worship.

However crossing provinces is banned for next 14 days and functioning of casinos, night clubs and gaming centres are not allowed.

Issuing a new guideline for the Covid-19 pandemic, Health Ministry's Director General of Health Service, Asela Gunawardena stated that functioning of industries, government and private sector offices, open markets and fairs, supermarkets, shopping malls, gyms, swimming pools and other sport activities would be allowed.

Restrictions also relaxed on functioning hotels, restaurants, spas and tourists attractions sites like museums and allowed conducting conference and seminars.

The Ministry stated that weddings could be conducted with the maximum of 150 participants or could limit to 25 per cent of the total seating capacity.

Non-Covid funerals were allowed to be held within 24 hours of the release of the body and with the maximum participation of 50 persons.

Public transport with limited seating capacity was allowed.

However restrictions continued to be imposed on visiting care homes and prisons. Though courts are allowed to function with a limited staff, public or prisoners were not allowed to attend.

As of Saturday, Sri Lanka has recorded 271,483 confirmed cases of Covid-19, while there are 27,000 active cases and 3,434 deaths.