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The Prime Minister said, this Friday, in a statement to the country, that, during the next week, Portugal is likely to reach the new thousand daily cases of covid-19.
“We are experiencing strong growth in new daily cases. If this trend continues, next week we will reach a thousand new cases per day. We have to stop the growth of this pandemic, but we will not be able to stop the country as we stopped it in March.” said António Costa, at the end of a meeting of the Crisis Office, insisting, on several occasions, that “the control of the pandemic depends on the personal control of each one.”
Denying access to school, preventing home visits and separating families at Christmas, “as happened at Easter”, is no longer a possibility. “It would be unthinkable to have a Christmas like Easter”, defended the Prime Minister, highlighting “five fundamental rules” to control the pandemic: wear a mask “as much as possible” and “mandatory when necessary”; “maintain regular hand hygiene”; “respect respiratory etiquette”; “maintain physical distance”; and use the “Stay Away Covid” app.
The application, he noted, “scrupulously respects the data protection and anonymity of everyone, but ensures that each of us, in case of infection, can warn everyone who may have been infected or, on the contrary, benefit from the alert. Someone infected us who has been with us for more than 15 minutes less than two meters ”.
In compliance with the regulations, the head of government assures that Portugal will be able to “control the pandemic, make the school year run smoothly, that companies maintain their activity and, above all, guarantee the protection of employment and family income.” “The social cost of the confinement was brutal, the personal suffering of all was enormous, the pain of the families was enormous, and we have to avoid going through it all again, we cannot go through it all again,” he justified. “There are no reasons to be afraid, but there are reasons for everyone to be cautious. Each person prevented is worth two.”
DGS presents plan for autumn / winter in a few days
António Costa also pointed out that, next week, the General Directorate of Health (DGS) will present a plan to combat covid-19 designed for the challenges that fall and winter bring. Even so, more important than knowing new measures is to comply with those that are already in force, insisted António Costa, asking for “permanent responsibility”, without “relaxation.”
The prime minister also said that “testing capacity has increased significantly” and that despite the growth in cases, the NHS is not yet overloaded, with today’s balance showing a drop in the number of hospitalized patients.
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