Although Portugal to date has been spared from the new Coronavirus, it is important to keep up to date with the development of the new coronavirus with accurate information from official sources. This is especially so for those planning to travel.
There are unfortunately many myths and misinformation around, so it is essential to focus on what is accurate, rather than that which is not.
David Thomas President of Safe Communities Portugal said Safe Communities have been closely monitoring the outbreak for some time. He explained “As a police officer in Hong Kong at the time of the SARS outbreak in 2002, it was vital that accurate information was available to the population. At that time this was more difficult as social media, such as Facebook was not available”.
He added “That has changed, but whereas social media can be a force for good, it can also be a means by which misleading information can be spread worldwide in literally seconds, which can have grave consequences”.
Thankfully there are many sources of information now available, which can be gained from many different sites.
In order to help Safe Communities has therefore “pulled together” information and advice only from official sources, such as the WHO, SNS Portugal, Centres for disease control etc, into a major incident portal on its website, which is being updated at least twice daily.
The portal comprising nine pages provides: Situation reports - Portugal and overseas; symptoms of the virus; preventive measures; risk assessments; Information from Director General of Health Portugal , Virus Global Spread map, links to official websites and contact points. The aim is to help spread awareness and preventive advice both to residents in Portugal as well as those travelling from here to overseas.
David added, “I wish to stress that this is only from official sources tailored local need, and presented in a way that provides an easy to access and navigate overview, with links to official sources where more detailed information can be found. It can be found at https://www.safecommunitiesportugal.com/major-incident-page/
