Faced with Covid-19, Portugal is closing its schools

Portuguese pupils and students will not have lessons for the next fifteen days.

AP - Armando Franca

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

The Portuguese government has announced the closure of nurseries and schools from this Friday in an attempt to stem the Covid-19 epidemic.

This is his second turn of the screw since the confinement established a week ago. 

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From nursery school to university, the Portuguese school system goes on vacation for 15 days.

There will be no distance learning this time around.

The duration of the closure of establishments announced by the government on Thursday is long enough to allow the situation to be reassessed and short enough to be made up for during the school holidays in February, Easter or this summer.

A week after imposing a second general lockdown, which did not include the closure of schools or universities, Prime Minister Antonio Costa explained that this measure had become necessary because of the British variant and " 

its speed of transmission

 ".

According to the head of government, this variant currently represents 20% of infections, but it could reach 60% as early as next week.

Portugal has chained for several days the new daily death records, with 221 additional deaths announced Thursday by the Directorate General of Health in its daily report.

After reaching a record of 14,647 new cases in 24 hours on Wednesday, this country of about 10 million inhabitants still recorded 13,544 on Thursday.

With 74,500 new cases in the last seven days, the country ranks first in the world in number of new contagions relative to its population.

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  • Portugal

  • Coronavirus

  • Health and medicine