Portugal Says Goodbye To 173 Days Under “State of Emergency”

• 4 May, 21

President Marcelo confirmed this evening that Portugal is saying goodbye to the State of Emergency that has been in force twice during the pandemic, but most recently for 173 consecutive days since last November.

What will follow, he hasn’t said. Will he decree, for example, a State of Calamity (as he did in 2020 when the country exited its first State of Emergency)? We will have to wait for later this week when the government itself will be deciding the next stage of deconfinement.

It’s clear from the conclusions coming out of the meeting of specialists at Infarmed today that the country as a whole is doing well. But there are still a number of ‘trouble spots’ – boroughs where incidence is not conforming to the limits of 120 cases per 100,000. Thus there will be a lot of decisions still to come.

But for the president, today’s meeting was enough to confirm his feelings that the country no longer requires a State of Emergency in which citizens’ fundamental rights in a democracy have been severely limited.

The country is a month along from Easter, three further weeks since the opening of schools, and the situation appears not to have been adversely affected by either.

Congratulating the “courageous resistance” of the Portuguese, as well as the huge input by the nation’s specialists and epidemiologists, Marcelo’s message was one of caution in that the pandemic is not yet over, and new variants could cause issues with the vaccines.

Cre:Portugalresident