Tonight’s Covid-19 Press Report

Thanks again to Daniel Caires for this summery from tonight’s press conference.

The reopening of Madeira to tourism, as of July 1, may result in an increase in the number of cases of covid-19, admitted today the Secretary of Health, Pedro Ramos, when the archipelago registers only two active patients.

“We are starting a second phase [of lack of definition], even more important: tourism will arrive and with it new cases for certain,” said the minister, in a press conference in Funchal.

Madeira has maintained a total of 90 cases of covid-19 for 37 consecutive days, with 88 recovered, three more than on Thursday.
The two active patients – one resident in Funchal, the other in Câmara de Lobos, on the west side of the island – are confined to hotel units and do not need hospital care.

“We want to continue to protect our population and now also defend our economy, because we depend on it to continue to live,” said Pedro Ramos, referring to the reopening of the tourism sector.

From July 1st, all passengers disembarked at Madeira and Porto Santo airports will have to carry a negative test for covid-19 carried out up to 72 hours before the start of the trip, or else they will have to do it upon arrival, the cost being assumed by the Regional Government, of PSD / CDS-PP coalition, and the result communicated up to a maximum of 12 hours.

“More dangerous will not be the tourists who will arrive from July, but Madeiran and Porto-Santenses who do not continue to comply [with the security rules]”, warned the Secretary of Health, stressing that the collaboration of all remains essential to “contain and prevent the spread of the virus”.

Pedro Ramos pointed out that the region took “timely measures” and the results were “positive”, with no deaths recorded by covid-19 and only one patient was in intensive care, however he has since recovered.
“We are going to start over by opening the doors to tourism, because we ensure all the measures recommended by the WHO [World Health Organization]”, he declared, stressing that the regional health system has “response capacity”, guarantees “robust surveillance” and ” active monitoring “and has” ability to test “.

The Laboratory of Clinical Pathology of the Madeira Health Service (Sesaram) has already processed a total of 18,342 tests for the new coronavirus, covering 16,608 users.
Currently, health authorities in the various counties in the region are monitoring 391 people under active surveillance and 580 in self-surveillance.

The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 421,000 deaths and infected more than 7.5 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.

In Portugal, 1,505 people died from 36,180 confirmed to be infected, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.