Dancing and singing will be allowed at private functions and bigger sporting crowds can attend seated outdoor venues from this weekend, under changes to South Australia's COVID rules.
South Australian Police Commissioner and State Emergency Coordinator Grant Stevens announced new rules for hospitality venues would begin this weekend.
Hospitality venues with stand-up drinking will be allowed to host 50 per cent capacity, while seated-only venues will move to 75 per cent capacity.
Venues with combined sitting and standing areas can have 50 per cent capacity.
Venues can currently have 50 per cent of their usual capacity and standing and drinking indoors have not been permitted.
Outdoor dining capacity and the cap of 50 people for home gatherings will remain.
Buffets will be allowed.
Private functions at hospitality venues can have 50 per cent capacity of up to 150 people and stand-up drinking, singing and dancing will be allowed.
Fully seated private functions can have 75 per cent capacity.
There will be no capacity restrictions on seated outdoor events, meaning near-capacity crowds should be able to return to Adelaide Oval in time for the football season.
But density limits will remain in standing areas of the ground.
The rules come into effect at 12:01am on Saturday and will be the latest in the state's fortnightly gradual easing of restrictions.
Mr Stevens said the state's COVID Ready Committee, which agreed to the changes, did not discuss lifting the use of masks in indoor public spaces, despite several eastern states moving to remove their mandates within days.
"Masks are still recognised as the best thing you can do to protect yourself from infection and protect others from being infected," he said.
"So I think there is a strong rationale for keeping masks in place at the moment."
Mr Stevens said despite the rising case numbers in recent days, the state's hospitalisation rates, and therefore the health system's ability to "cope with additional cases in the community", gave the committee confidence to further reduce restrictions.
"Whilst we may have seen fluctuations in case numbers in South Australia, we haven't seen that specifically translating to ongoing and increasing admission rates in our hospitals so that is the key driver here," he said.
Mr Stevens said there "was a potential for case numbers to rise" as a result of these changes.
"This does mean if we were to see a significant increase in cases that did put excessive pressure on the health system, we may have to reintroduce restrictions to keep on top of that," he said.
"We're hopeful that that doesn't occur, all of the indicators are that things are looking very positive in South Australia notwithstanding that there are fluctuations in case numbers based on the sorts of activities that are permitted to occur, such as children returning to school."
