"We hope it will not exceed a month, but we will see, we hope not," Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa told reporters, during a campaign action as a candidate for the January 24 presidential elections in Lisbon.

Asked if he believes that the lockdown will only last a month, he replied: "I hope it will only be a month. If we manage to - it depends a lot on all of us - in these fifteen days, and then on the renewal, when it is done, already at the end of the month, we get close to Carnival and have common sense, if that happens, and if it works, if we reverse the trend ".

The candidate supported by PSD and CDS-PP, who gave statements to journalists for more than half an hour, after having visited a social grocery store in the parish of Santo António, in Lisbon, reiterated that he would like "by the end of February" to have a "turning point" in the evolution of covid-19 in Portugal, with a "trend of falling cases".