“At least until 20 March, the entire school community should monitor any symptoms, adopting hygiene and social distance behaviours”, declared the public health delegate Maria Filomena Agostinho, stressing that whoever had “close contact” with the student “will receive from the services [SNS24 line] direct information”.

That official, who spoke to journalists after a meeting at the Municipal Centre for Civil Protection and Relief Operations in Portimão, stressed that the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) will monitor the situation during the closing period of the school attended by the student.

The meeting, called for emergency after confirmation of the case, the first to be reported in the south of the country, and brought together Health, Civil Protection authorities, the direction of the Manuel Teixeira Gomes Secondary School and class directors

Asked about the health status of the rest of the student's family, the Portimão public health delegate said that “they are still waiting for the results [for the new coronavirus screening tests]”, but that “they are all well”.

According to Maria Filomena Agostinho, the class directors were tasked with contacting “those in charge of education to inform them of the closure of the school”, so that they would not be “caught off guard with the gates closed”.

Regarding the school break and possible compensations, the official indicated that it will be the Regional Education Directorate to decide, but underlined that this is an issue to which the organization is “sensitive”, since the “next weeks would be tests and exams”.

The public health delegate from Portimão also stressed that the country "is in a phase of extended containment" and that "the citizen should be the first to contribute to the containment", adding that, for now, this is the only school to close in the Algarve city.

"The public health unit in Portimão will continue to monitor the situation, publicly informing the evolution of the facts whenever justified," he concluded.

The student at the Manuel Teixeira Gomes Secondary School, in Portimão, in the district of Faro, was diagnosed with Covid-19, the first confirmed case in southern Portugal, after being in Italy, during the week of Carnival school holidays.

A note posted on the website of the Manuel Teixeira Gomes School Group states that the student returned to school on 27 February and “was accompanied daily by the SNS24 team”, having on 8 March been diagnosed with the disease.

Portugal has recorded 30 confirmed cases of infection with the new coronavirus, which causes Covid-19 disease. 447 people are under surveillance by health authorities following contact with infected people.

All patients with the new coronavirus are hospitalised. Of the total number of patients, 18 are men and 12 are women.

The Covid-19 epidemic was detected in December in China, and has already caused about 3,800 deaths among more than 109,000 people infected in a hundred countries and territories.

Of the infected people, about 60 thousand have already recovered.