“We are going to recommend that back to school be done in an orderly manner and respecting the rules. We already know all the rules that allow us to minimize the risk of infection, which involves avoiding direct transmission through droplets as much as possible, and indirect transmission through surfaces,” said Graça Freitas at the daily press conference on the covid- 19 in Portugal.

The director-general of Health insisted that "direct transmission depends on the behaviour of each one and that the indirect one depends on the cleaning and disinfection of surfaces".

“We must return to classes with all confidence, as long as it is ensured that everyone, educators, students, teachers, employees, contributes to the effort to stay away, maintain respiratory etiquette, wear a mask, do hand hygiene and avoid socializing in front ahead and up close”, she stressed.

For Graça Freitas, if all the rules and instructions are observed, “the risk of going back to school is the same as that of living in community”.

"There is no reason why parents should not let their children go to school", she maintained.

Once again, the director-general of Health recalled that society will have to get used to living with the new reality resulting from the existence of a new coronavirus.

"It was nature that decided to launch a new virus that infects the human species and we are going to have to live with it in the coming years," she said.

Assuming before the “educational community that the return to school is being considered to guarantee the safety of everyone”, Graça Freitas reminded, however, that there is no zero risk in anything.

“Obviously there is no zero risk in anything, not even in our social, work or relationship life, but what we are doing is a set of rules to minimize the risks and these rules are dependent on several things: the conditions of the building, the equipment, the organization of classes, the type of contacts between students and spaces”.

In addition to this organization of the school space and the disinfection of surfaces, there is another large group of measures related to the behaviour of the stakeholders.

"A young person can behave safely outside the school environment as well as inside the school," she stressed.

11th and 12th year students will return to schools on the 18th, after almost two months of distance learning due to the covid-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Education recommends that schedules be created that are out of step between classes and that the rooms used are far from each other, avoiding the concentration of people as much as possible and that the time for breaks is reduced.