“If things go wrong in de-confinement, we will have to backtrack,” says Portugal’s Prime Minister

Prime Minister António Costa warned on Monday that “if things start to go wrong” with the Covid-19 pandemic, ” there will be ” backtracking steps” in the de-confinement measures.

“If things start to go wrong, we have to take a step backwards. We will always take whatever steps are necessary to protect security. We hope they will be forwards, but if they have to be backwards, they will be,” he assured.

The head of government pointed out that as long as the measures of deconfinement continue to exist, “the risk of contamination increases automatically” and for this reason, “this risk of contamination must always be kept under control.”

Speaking to journalists in Paços de Ferreira, in the district of Porto, where today he visited a clothing company that is producing 100,000 masks a day, Costa insisted on the need for the Portuguese to maintain “self-discipline” in the context of the deconfinement that will follow.

“This will only go well if people feel safe, if they have the confidence and discipline to help others feel safe,” he stressed.

The Prime Minister noted that the government is seeing with each sector of activity “what are the standards of hygiene in the workplace, hygiene in transportation to the workplace and individual protection of each of the workers, which will allow the economy to resume the pace of its activity”.

He then noted that this process can never “question what is fundamental, which is the control of the pandemic”, concluding: “The next phase is to be able to learn how we are going to resume our daily life, living with the virus until there is a vaccine”.