Jersey Island, where around 20% of the population is Portuguese, has been giving advice and communicating with the population in Portuguese under the plan to prevent the spread of the pandemic covid-19.
Messages, leaflets, posters and inquiries are being made in Portuguese and Polish, the language of the main immigrant communities, with information on the confinement regime and measures of social distance.
“The Portuguese community has been complying and some restaurants have already adapted, starting to sell abroad”, said the Portuguese nurse, Duarte Vieira, to Lusa.
Recruited as part of a campaign by the authorities to employ bilingual health professionals and get closer to the main immigrant communities, Duarte Vieira moved to Jersey in 2012 with his wife, also a nurse, and says he was the first of 30 doctors and nurses Portuguese currently on the island.
The most recent assessment, made by the Jersey Government on Sunday at the end of the day, accounted for 213 infected people, five more than on Friday, and three deaths in total, a number that has not changed for more than a week, since April 4th.
“In general, the pandemic is evolving in the same way as in the United Kingdom. We are about 2-3 weeks late. It is estimated that the peak will be reached in mid-May ”, indicated Vieira.
The Portuguese believes that the control of the rate of contagion on the island located in the English Channel was stopped by the confinement regime imposed on 30 March, and that most people are respecting it, he said.
A week after schools closed, on March 23, the government issued an order for the majority of the population to stay at home, limiting the time they can go out to shopping or exercise.
Failure to comply with these rules has already resulted in fines of 300 to 500 pounds (343 to 572 euros), according to local police reports.
To mitigate the impact, the Jersey government introduced financial support for companies and workers, guaranteeing the payment of 80% of the salary up to 2000 pounds (2,300 euros).
For immigrant workers who have been ineligible for the social security system for less than six months, there is a minimum maintenance allowance of £ 70 (80 euros) per week, provided they are available to volunteer in sectors in need.
Last week, it announced the investment of 14.4 million pounds (16.5 million euros) to build a 180-bed field hospital in a park outside the capital St. Helier and the reinforcement of the testing capacity of diagnosis, which were made in the UK.
Instead of two days, results are obtained in a few hours, reducing the need for patients with symptoms to wait in isolation to start receiving treatment.
On the island of Jersey since 2012, Duarte Vieira, a native of Santa Cruz, Madeira, guarantees that most people “are respecting the measures” and that the authorities have made an effort to issue messages, leaflets and posters in Portuguese and Polish , language of the main immigrant communities.
Vieira adds that, currently, 20% of the 110 thousand inhabitants are Portuguese, “90% of whom are from Madeira”, and who work mainly in the areas of civil construction, tourism and gardening.
Statistically, the last census, carried out in 2011, indicated that around 7,000 Portuguese represented 7% of the population of about 98 thousand inhabitants and Poles 3%, but the honorary consulate of Portugal in St Helier estimates that they reside in Jersey 15 and 20 thousand Portuguese.
Jersey is part of the Channel Islands, territories dependent on the British Crown, subject to the sovereignty of Queen Elizabeth II, but which are not part of the United Kingdom and have executive, legislative and fiscal autonomy.
The archipelago also makes Guernsey, which combines several small islands and has a population of around 33,000 people, of which 1,300 are of Portuguese origin.
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