The Municipality of Loulé wants to count the daily overnight stays in hotels so that guests are added to the residents and the calculation of the incidence rate for Covid-19 is proportional to the real number of people who are staying.

Loulé Council argues that the ratio is being "wrongly calculated", since foreign tourists are not considered in the total population, but if they are infected, they are included in the county's positive cases.

"This situation will be easily corrected if overnight stays in hotels in each municipality are accounted for and this number is added to the population of residents".

For the Municipality of Loulé, the fact that the cases of national residents are counted in the municipalities where they are detected and not in those of residence “penalises the municipalities with more tourism”, as is the case of Loulé.

Meanwhile, the Municipality of Albufeira has also requested a review of the criteria for calculating the incidence rate of Covid-19, claiming that the ratio is being “artificially inflated” due to the presence of tourists in the county.

In a statement, the municipality estimates that “about twice the number of residents” should be in the municipality, which is measurable, “by the 30 percent increase in waste collection compared to May, the huge increase in consumption and the large increase in the number of requests for services”.

“The Council of Albufeira demands a review of these criteria and recalls that this assessment, applied by the Government, will generate a huge slowdown in the regional and local economy and will have serious consequences for the Algarve, in general, and for the municipality of Albufeira, in particular.”

Regretting that such an important ratio is “artificially inflated”, the Council of Albufeira claims that the adaptation of criteria to the reality of municipalities that make a living from tourist activity is “fair” and “urgent”.

“This fact was addressed by me in one of the face-to-face conversations I had with the secretary of State for Tourism, as well as with the president of the Algarve Tourism Region and other regional authorities, in order to resolve the situation that is very damaging to our region”, said José Carlos Rolo.