Portugal to reopen on Monday – outdoors/indoors events to be allowed!

Portugal’s state of emergency, the highest level of coronavirus alert, will end on Friday, the president announced, as infections drop sharply and the country prepares to further ease a strict lockdown imposed more than three months ago.

Declared in mid-January to tackle what was then the world’s worst increase in infections, the state of emergency allowed the government to impose tough measures to suspend people’s rights and freedoms.

“Without a state of emergency, it is necessary to maintain or adopt all essential measures to prevent setbacks,” President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said in a televised address on Tuesday.

“If necessary, I will not hesitate to move forward with a new state of emergency,”

Portugal will transition to a state of “calamity”, which still allows the government to impose some measures to reduce the risk of contagion but the rules it can put in place are more limited and must be justified.