Addressing the nation this evening to usher in yet another State of Emergency (the 14th so far in this Covid-19 pandemic), President Marcelo called for “prudence and common sense”.
These are the ingredients that should get the country through Easter without the terrible backwards slide experienced over Christmas.
“We’re closer than ever”, he told Portugal’s citizens. “But we still haven’t got to the goal we want: a summer and autumn that really represent the end of more than a year of lives put on hold, run-over, destroyed…. What we all want is a sensible, successful deconfinement, with testing, screening and vaccinations – particularly monitoring of schools that have already reopened and those that will open after Easter. It is a huge but essential effort but needed to guarantee trust and reinforce security”.
It was, perhaps ‘more of the same’ but with a definite dig at authorities when it comes to speed (or lack of it) over vaccinations.
Vaccinations have to be done ‘ever more quickly’, he stressed, so that the country can get back to what it has to do: “reconstruct what the pandemic has destroyed”.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
