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Prohibition of departure from municipalities on weekends extended to holidays. The Prime Minister invokes the 1986 law in order not to be able to stop the PCP Congress.
The Portuguese will have to wait two more weeks to find out what their Christmas season will be like in the Covid-19 era. After having cultivated the hope of being able to “save Christmas” with restrictive measures, António Costa refused, this Saturday, for the first time, to outline any scenario for the second half of December and assumed that the state of emergency would last until then. .
For now, there are advances in the prohibitions of movement between municipalities, in the next two long weekends, and the closure of schools on the eve of the holidays of December 1 and 8. The government will try to convince the private sector to fire its workers on those days.
Almost 24 hours after Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa missed Christmas, the Prime Minister assumed that “I would be very surprised if there was no emergency at Christmas.” However, despite the insistence of journalists at the press conference that the limitations decided in the Council of Ministers the day before yesterday were known, Costa only said that the state of emergency at Christmas “does not allow anticipating any concrete measure” and refused. to anticipate “what could happen in terms of the school year.”
“Insufficient” results
For now, the positive signs are that the restrictive measures implemented a month ago are beginning to register, indicating a “slowdown in the rate of growth” of infected people, he said. But the results “remain insufficient.”
“We still have a lot to fight to achieve the desired result,” he warned, to justify the confinement measures that will be in force during the 15 days of the state of emergency and that go through “controlling displacements.”
Namely: the whole country will have a traffic ban between municipalities on long weekends due to the bridges with holidays of December 1 and 8. On Monday, December 30 and 7, there will be no classes, civil servants will stay home and individuals will be encouraged to give their workers time off.
At the same time, in the 127 counties with the most infections, curfew hours and restrictions on restaurant and business operations are maintained. One of these counties is Loures, where the PCP will hold its elective conference next weekend. Costa recalled that the law that regulates the state of emergency, since 1986, does not allow the prohibition of political events.
Portugal less restricted Given the complaints of the catering businessmen, Costa assured that Portugal was in Europe among those that least restricted the activity of the sector, although “several scientific studies show that the restaurant is a place of risk”.
“We want to adopt the measures that the country is capable of adopting to withstand this suffering. But we cannot prevent this suffering from having to exist up to a certain point,” he argued, denying that there are gaps within the Government due to the severity of the measures. now announced.
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