“I think that it is finally starting to be perceived in some chancelleries the great disparity of the situation in Portugal. We now have a country where the situation is practically very low and then we have 19 parishes, where there is a very significant number of new cases”, he said,.

António Costa pointed out that “Belgium, for example, on Sunday, 12 July, realised this and has already made a very clear distinction between Lisbon and the rest of the country; the Netherlands, which had put Porto together with Lisbon, has already removed Porto”, and revealed that on 13 July he had a telephone conversation with his Irish counterpart, with the same concern to explain the situation of the numbers of covid-19 and the necessary differentiation.

“I also tried to make him aware of this differentiation and that, in particular, areas that are traditional tourist destinations for the Irish, such as the Algarve and Madeira, are in a clearly distinct situation from these 19 parishes”, he said.

According to António Costa, “this message is important, because people see the global numbers by country and then they are often unaware of the situation”.

On the decision by the Belgian authorities to place Alentejo and Algarve under orange alert, António Costa devalued the issue, considering that “a mere recommendation to go to the doctor” is not “a great disincentive” for people to travel to these regions.

On the other hand, the Portuguese Prime Minister noted that, in the reference weeks taken into account, “the Algarve and the Alentejo were hyperinflated by two absolutely atypical phenomena: the Odiáxere party”, which he said he hoped “will not be repeated anywhere in the Algarve, and the situation in the care home of Reguengos de Monsaraz”, two situations that resulted in an “anomalous number of new cases that do not correspond to the pattern of the regions”.

António Costa took the opportunity to underline the “individual responsibility of everyone”, and that “nobody can alienate”, stressing that “nobody can ignore that every time there is a distraction, this has a price, and a very high price”, to health, but “also of the economic health of an entire region”, as was the case in Odiáxere, where a party was held that was the source of a great outbreak.

“May it not be repeated and that people have learned their lesson, because the whole Algarve and the whole country are paying a very high price for that party. Therefore, games like these cannot continue”, he concluded.