The country’s desconfinement plan will be presented, which will cover successive activities and will be guided by a set of specific criteria depending on the evolution of the pandemic
At the press conference broadcast from the Palace of Aid, António Costa declared that the meeting of the Council of Ministers approved without any amendment the decree-law approved for the state of emergency that is now in force. The first reason, he stresses, is that the measures taken are producing the desired effects on pandemic prevention. The goal is a positive evolution in the decrease in the number of new cases per day, which has suffered a “sharp decline”.
Despite the improvement, the Prime Minister stressed that we are still far from achieving the desired situation in controlling the pandemic in Portugal. “We are much better, but we are still four times worse than the day we started the lockdown in May last year,” he said. The number of inmates has dropped significantly, he added, but it is still too high.
The British variant in the number of new cases also worries the Prime Minister. António Costa highlighted the highest transmissibility and indicated that this strain is currently found in 49 percent of new cases in Portugal. By the end of March, the government also wants the country to have more than 80 percent of the population over 80 vaccinated against the Covid-19 pandemic. “Everything recommends that we take the utmost caution,” he added.
As for schools, he recalls that the government resisted the closure of schools, the last measure taken, and said that it will also be the first measure that will be reversed when the country begins to deconfine.