Many companies from Faro, mainly in the catering sector, "will close their doors" if the inclusion of the municipality of Faro in the list of municipalities in partial confinement, where the mandatory curfew is being applied, he told the Sul Informação Rogerio Cod.
The Farense mayor anticipated the likely entry of the Algarve capital to the list of municipalities with a transmission rate of Covid-19 above 240 cases per 14 inhabitants, in XNUMX days, the threshold beyond which the Government considers a municipality to be of high risk and was concerned about the implications.
Besides Faro, They are on the threshold of entering the list of other municipalities in the Algarve, namely Albufeira, Portimão, Vila do Bispo, VRSA and, eventually, Lagos, which will join São Brás de Alportel, which is already one of the counties in confinement and should remain as such.
In the case of the municipality of Faro, the Red line, like the Chamber of Faro called you in a post made yesterday on Facebook, are the 155 cases accumulated over the last 14 days. Yesterday, the county had «38 cases above» this limit, which puts it on the verge of partial confinement.
“This will bring a lot of restrictions to the economy and trade. The restaurants will not be able to open on the weekend and, certainly, many of them will close”, in some cases, definitively, he considered.
The fact is that, with the mandatory curfew from 13:00 pm and until 5:00 am, on Saturday and Sunday, restaurants “will miss four meals” and then those that, as a rule, give them greater income. Not to mention dinners on weekdays, when circulation is prohibited from 23:00, which discourages many people from dining out.
"After closing doors, the recovery is very difficult and this will have implications in terms of employment", considered Rogério Bacalhau, who warns that the situation will imply "very large losses for the region, in particular for Faro».
the overcoming of Red line it was due to a "constant increase in the number of cases in recent weeks".
However, Rogério Bacalhau says he cannot "explain why", bearing in mind that, "as far as I know, there are no outbreaks in Faro».
“What we have are families that have been infected over the past few weeks and are spread across the county. Every day we had 10 or 15 new cases. But we haven't identified any specific outbreaks. We even did tests in some camps and everything is normal», he assured.
On the other hand, «it is not known that there are people of Faro hospitalized. Some are asymptomatic, others have mild symptoms, without seriousness, and they are all in their homes».
In schools, although there are cases among students, they are “children of people who are infected” and “there is no transmission information within the schools, which have been safe places, where the rules are being followed”.
The publication made yesterday by the municipality served to alert the population that Faro it would, very likely, soon enter the list of municipalities in partial confinement and be subject to curfew and other measures decreed by the Government, in the scope of the state of emergency.
However, as the president of the Chamber of Faro admits, the number of new cases began to increase, consistently, "three or four weeks ago", after a long time in which the situation "was stabilized, with 40 to 50 cases every 14 days".
Rogério Bacalhau justifies this apparently late warning, just a day of the Council of Ministers where the list of risk councils will be defined for the next fortnight, with the fact that the Council's concern is not so much “the red line, but to keep things running”.
“We have been monitoring the situation through our Civil Protection commission, which has been in constant meetings. We have been running campaigns for weeks to encourage the use of masks and respect for health rules. I don't think one thing is related to the other," he said.
“We have also been working with local businesses on a Christmas campaign. We are very concerned with these merchants and trying to give them a helping hand", said the mayor from Farense, admitting, even so, that the support that the municipality can give "will always be incipient".
“There will have to be very large and quick help from the Government, so that companies do not go into insolvency. Municipalities cannot inject money into companies for them to survive. These actions will have to be carried out at the level of the Central Administration», concluded Rogério Bacalhau.
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