Vítor Aleixo, mayor of Loulé, this Friday demanded the Government to adopt a new formula to account for the positive cases of Covid-19, since the current one “penalizes municipalities with more tourism”. The mayor wants the national cases detected to be attributed to the municipality where they reside and also that foreign visitors who are staying in hotels will count as the population of the municipality where they spend their holidays.
Loulé and Albufeira, two of the councils with the most tourism in the Algarve, retreated this Thursday in the process of de-confinement, which led to the mandatory closing of restaurants and cafes at 22 pm or stores and shopping centers until 30 pm.
Casinos and water parks were also forced to close their doors again.
It was, in fact, at the entrance of the (closed) Aquashow, in Quarteira, that the press conference took place, which, around Vítor Aleixo, was attended by other mayors of the Loulé county and also businessmen.
Aleixo stressed to journalists that "the whole region is united in this appeal, so that the criteria that determine decisions like the one taken yesterday and with which we are in complete disagreement are reviewed."
The problem of injustice would be solved, according to the Loulé mayor, if “foreign tourists were considered to count the population. This clearance is easy to do through the county's hotel units. This would be reason enough to immediately lower these ratios and stay in a safe line, so that we would not now have to go through a setback in relation to the measures that were already in force and that, in some way, already allowed for the resumption of economic activity».
The mayor also defends that "the national cases detected are attributed to the county where the people reside" and not where they are identified, something that, says the mayor, is not happening, despite the Government's guarantees.
On June 2, Prime Minister António Costa told reporters that "the region's penalty" is "corrected", since "any [Portuguese] not resident in the Algarve, who has the misfortune to test positive, is registered in the your home address'.
Therefore, Costa assured at the time, «this will not be the factor that will change the incidence rate in the Algarve».
This Friday, at the press conference to update the epidemiological situation of the District Civil Protection Commission, Jorge Botelho, secretary of state coordinating the fight against the pandemic in the region, recalled that there is this commitment to count the «Portuguese citizens in his area of residence'.
But Vítor Aleixo guarantees: "as far as I know, this isn't happening."
And if that doesn't happen, «with this form of calculation, the Algarve will not be able to recover during the summer, because the number of tourists will increase in the coming weeks and the ratio is being miscalculated! Right now, it's Loulé and Albufeira, Lagos is already on alert and, next week, there will be other municipalities in the region», believes the president of Loulé.
For the mayor, at a time when «four million Portuguese are already vaccinated, when the entire vaccination process has been going quite well at national level and the pressure from hospitals is not as critical as it was in previous vacancies, the management of pandemic, always respecting the security issue, should pay greater attention to economic activity", which is greatly penalized by this "calculation error".
For Aleixo, the setback in the lack of confinement “makes all the difference. We know that our county has small businesses in the catering sector, such as cafes and terraces. This has a very important weight for many small companies and for much of the workforce that makes a living from this activity. We know that closing at 22:30 pm or closing at 1 am makes all the difference. This will have a truly devastating economic effect”.
João Soares, director of the Hotel D. José, in Quarteira, and representative of the Hotel Association of Portugal in the Algarve, agrees with this dark scenario.
Firstly because, as I told the Sul Informação, the «regression affects the image of the municipality, the image of the Algarve and affects the image of the country, because this news, as we know today, with globalization, reaches all international communication very quickly».
Also, “in operational and logistical terms it ends up having a lot of impact. As we know, there is a setback in some measures, which alters schedules and the very need for human resources».
For the hotel director, «the restoration is very affected. If it works until midnight, you can do two shifts, which you cannot do until 22:30. Here there is a whole disorganization of what was already organized and that doesn't make any sense. Furthermore, the calculation of numbers, as said here today, is wrong and has to be corrected very quickly».
As if local measures were not enough, the measures applied to the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, such as the prohibition to leave that region during the weekend, also end up indirectly affecting the Algarve economy.
«We had some changes for groups, as well as for individual clients who would come to the Algarve. We had groups from Saturday to Saturday and they will no longer be able to come. And then the whole way things are done lightly, announcing on a Thursday what will be put into practice on a Friday, is impossible», he considered.
The situation at Aquashow is, for João Soares, an example of this. “We are in the biggest water park in the country, which had to close. The hotel was full and leaked from one minute to the next because guests cannot enjoy the park. All these issues are very damaging to the region», he concluded.
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