Virus: Portugal goes from record to record and bans travel abroad

The country currently the hardest hit in the world, in proportion to its population of 10 million inhabitants, recorded Thursday 303 deaths and 16,432 additional cases in 24 hours, according to the daily report of the General direction of health.

The total death toll since the start of the pandemic has thus amounted to 11,608 dead, including more than 3,000 over the past two weeks, while the country has been subjected since January 15 to a second general containment.

“Clearly things are going very badly“, admitted Prime Minister Antonio Costa, during an interview granted Wednesday evening on a national television.

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“We have observed an exponential growth of new cases, and this is leading to new hospitalizations which in turn put gigantic pressure on the National Health Service.“, he said adding that”this tension will surely last for several weeks“.

The number of people hospitalized, however, fell Thursday, to 6,565 patients (including 782 in intensive care), for the first time since the start of the year.

– Risk area –

In this context, the state of health emergency in force since early November will for the first time be accompanied by a ban on non-essential travel.

“Except in exceptional cases, during the next fortnight, the exits of national citizens by air, land or sea, will be limited.“, announced the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo Cabrita, during a speech in Parliament.

This new restriction measure must come into force at midnight on the night of Saturday to Sunday, as well as the reestablishment of controls at the country’s land borders.

“In the same way that we had limited flights from the United Kingdom and suspended links with Brazil, we will contribute to the European desire to limit flights between risk areas throughout the European Union“, explained Mr. Cabrita.

The European Commission, anxious to avoid border closures within the EU, recommended Monday that member states put in place new travel restrictions for the areas most affected by the virus.

Portugal had already suspended its air links with the United Kingdom last week. Lisbon then announced on Wednesday the suspension of all flights with Brazil, from Friday.

– English variant –

According to the Socialist Prime Minister, the epidemic has been racing since the start of the year due to the arrival of the new variant detected in England, combined with the reduction in health measures decided during the weekend of Christmas.

“If we had learned in time of the existence of the English variant, we would surely have taken different measures for the Christmas period“, justified Antonio Costa.

He also admitted to having committed “errors“in the way of communicating with the Portuguese.”People did not understand that we were really in confinement until the schools were closed“, decided a week later, he regretted.

The government decided on Thursday that schools will remain closed, switching from February 8 to distance education.

In Portuguese hospitals, the situation seemed increasingly critical. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, a hospital in the western suburbs of Lisbon had to urgently transfer more than a hundred patients due to a problem in its oxygen distribution network.