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The Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa. Stock Photography.
Portugal will open preschools and primary schools on Monday as part of a plan to gradually ease covid restrictions and reopen society.
“The reopening must be done gradually and carefully,” Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa said of relieving the harsh closure that the country has had since mid-January.
Hair salons, libraries and bookstores can also open on Mondays, while restaurants, for example, have to wait until April 19 and then with limited hours.
In January, the strong spread of the infection caused Portugal’s already fragile healthcare system to almost collapse. But the situation has improved significantly since then, writes Reuters.
On Thursday, 627 new deaths were reported in the country, which has about 10 million inhabitants. A total of 16,635 Portuguese died with covid-19.
No crisis in modern times has hit the Portuguese economy dependent on Portugal as hard as the crown pandemic. The country’s GDP fell 7.6 percent last year, the steepest drop since 1936.
