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The prime minister said today that the country’s return to a state of emergency is not on the table, highlighting that it is a constitutional competence of the President of the Republic and that the previous confinement had “immense costs.”
This position was conveyed by António Costa in an interview with TVI, held at the Prime Minister’s official residence in São Bento, which lasted about an hour, after being questioned about a possible return from Portugal to an emergency situation due to the increase constant in the number of covid-19 cases in recent weeks.
“It is not a scenario that is currently on the table,” replied the executive leader, after being asked if he had already discussed this matter with the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
At this point, António Costa stressed that the scenario adopted by the Government was to raise the state of alert to the level of calamity.
“Right now, this is the appropriate level, but it all depends on a number of factors. It is true that we are going to have a greater number of new cases per day than in the worst phase of the pandemic last April. But fortunately , now, with much less hospitalized than at that time and, above all, with much less hospitalized in intensive care, which is largely due to the fact that there was a significant change in the age group affected, “defended the prime minister.
António Costa also defended that, currently, the National Health Service (SNS) “is better prepared than it was at the beginning of this crisis” pandemic.
“We have an occupancy rate for intensive care beds for covid-19 of 66%. Fortunately, we are far from having SNS under pressure,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of the Government adopting a curfew measure at night, as is already the case in several European countries, the executive leader replied that he cannot exclude any measure.
“But I must say that the cost of these measures is immense,” especially in the social and economic sphere, he declared, before mentioning that last spring’s closure generated almost 100,000 unemployed in the country.
At this stage of the interview, without being questioned about his institutional relations with the President of the Republic, António Costa even took the opportunity to globally praise the action of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
“If there is something that has gone very well in the last five years, it is the excellent articulation between the Government and the President of the Republic, both with the current and the previous one,” he added.
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