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At least 67 young Belgians, between the ages of 18 and 20, are infected with COVID-19 after returning from a holiday in Albufeira earlier this month, being isolated from their home in Belgium, Belgian authorities announced Wednesday. The news was advanced by the governor of the province of West Flanders, Carl Decaluwé, who, quoted by the Belgian press, assures that the young people were infected on vacation in the Algarve between 2 and 12 September.
Approximately half of these 67 infected young people – who are between 18 and 20 years old and are isolated from home – participated in a stay organized by the Belgian tour operator Summer Bash, specialized in trips for young people between 16 and 24 years old, while the The rest rented one. private house for vacations. According to Carl Decaluwé, “the number of infected young people is expected to increase”, as the Belgian authorities have not yet been able to trace all the contacts of those who tested positive for covid-19.
In total, 130 young Belgians spent their first vacation in Portugal with the tour operator Summer Bash, with the company recommending testing and quarantine.
Young people will not have complied with safety regulations in Portugal
Graça Freitas reported this Wednesday, at the press conference on the evolution of the pandemic in Portugal, that the travel organizers have already admitted that the young people “did not comply with the safety regulations that were insistently defended by those who organized the trip. as by Portuguese Authorities “.
The Director General of Health also said that the Algarve health authorities “will carry out a retrospective analysis of the events” to try to detect the first case of the outbreak, but recalled that it could have started because “some young Belgian from the large group who remained in Albufeira and he is not originally from Portugal ”.
“Given the incubation period of the disease and given that many people have asymptomatic disease, it does not mean that they have contracted it from a person residing in Portugal,” he said.
Most of these young people are from the towns of Waregem, Tielt and Roeselare, in West Flanders, the Dutch part of Belgium. Among Belgian local authorities, there are also those who think that young people have not complied with all the rules: “I suspect that they have not fully followed the restrictive measures,” Waregem Mayor Kurt Vanryckeghem said, also quoted by the Belgian press. .
Like the metropolitan region of Lisbon and the north of Portugal, the Algarve integrates the classification of “orange zone” in the traffic light system of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which means that control and quarantine is only recommended to the return to Belgium. .
The Belgian authorities announced that they registered, on average, 779 infections per day in the week of September 6 to 12, an increase of 52% compared to the previous seven-day period, and a new balance is expected for today. In total, the country has registered 94,795 cases of contagion and 9,930 deaths from covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.
