It is "unacceptable and condemnable to take advantage of the epidemic outbreak to liquidate labour rights, reduce wages and lay off workers" at Faro Airport said a representative of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP).
“Worse than the fear that we may feel about this virus is only the feeling that we have been betrayed by the system's bureaucrats” said Faro’s regional head of the Portuguese Nurses Union this week (SEP).
Only students of the 11th and 12th years (penultimate and final year of education) will be likely be able to return, in this academic year, to take face-to-face classes, Prime Minister António Costa announced this Thursday. However,”if and when” students return to schools will only be decided according to the evolution of the pandemic in Portugal.
With Easter just around the corner, the government urged people this week to keep up the fight against the novel coronavirus, which has already infected thousands across the country, as well as telling them to stay home during the usually busy holiday period.
Parliament have temporarily suspended electricity, water and gas shutoffs, and granted partial pardon to some prisoners on Wednesday, as the country moved to contain the economic and social damage of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Workers who are under reduced working hours or suspended from their employment contract (the so-called lay-off mode), will only be able to work in certain sectors. The Council of Ministers approved this Thursday, April 9th, a decree-law that defines the sectors in which these individuals can seek work.
Daniel Varela and Joana Pedroso are two young Algarvians who, when they realized they could help fight COVID-19, did not turn their heads from the fight. With a prototyping company, set up about six months ago, in Loulé, they decided to make their services available to the community. And so they started a “pioneering work, until now, in Portugal”: the production of swabs.
In view of the official figures released today by the Directorate-General for Health (DGS), which indicate 345 deaths from COVID-19 so far in Portugal, the projections of researchers from the Institute for Health Evaluation and Metrics (IHME), at the University of Washington, point to another 126 deaths over the next three months.
