António Costa said, this Thursday, February 11, that "we will have to maintain the current level of confinement" during the month of March.
The prime minister spoke after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, held today, and after the renewal of the State of Emergency until 1 March, by Parliament.
Essentially, everything remains the same, with, for example, closed schools and the civic duty of retirement. The only difference is that open establishments will be able to sell books and school supplies.
According to the prime minister, the confinement "is producing results", with the "significant reduction in the transmission rate", the Rt, which is at 0,77, the “lowest value the country has had since the beginning of the pandemic”.
Even so, the data “are still not enough to ease the measures”, since, in addition to delays in vaccination, there are also the “risks of new variants”.
“We have to maintain efforts to reduce cases, hospitalizations and deaths. The situation remains extremely serious. We cannot settle for the numbers we still have, which are unacceptable if we compare with the deaths of the first wave», he added.
Regarding the distrust - and when will it happen -, the prime minister said that "it is extremely premature to bring this debate to public opinion".
Even in relation to schools, António Costa assumed that it is “premature to think about whether we will be able to return to face-to-face teaching before or after the Easter holidays”.
“It can mislead citizens into thinking that the deconfinement can start next week or 15 days from now. Let us concentrate on continuing to comply with measures, with the sense of sacrifice that they imply for everyone, but at this moment it would be too hasty to discuss. There are still several weeks to finish the confinement», he added.
António Costa also addressed the issue of vaccines, saying that the capacity for vaccination is lower than expected due to delays in production.
"Our problem is not distribution, nor is it professional: the problem is outside Portugal and beyond our control and it is the production capacity of the industry," he said.
As for Easter, which takes place on April 4, the prime minister assured that "it will certainly not be the Easter we know."
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