Environment minister self-isolating after coronavirus case contact

  • Lusa
  • 6 July 2021

According to a source at the ministry, the environment minister has no symptoms and is well, but has been advised by health authorities to remain in isolation.

Portugal’s minister of environment and climate action, João Pedro Matos Fernandes, is self-isolating, after having been in close contact with a person who is now known to be infected with the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, a source at the ministry announced on Tuesday.

According to the source, the minister has no symptoms and is well, but has been advised by health authorities to remain in isolation, as happened with the prime minister, António Costa, last week after a similar contact.

The minister was to have attended a ceremony on Tuesday to launch the international public tender for the design and construction of the Porto Metro network’s new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, which had initially been scheduled for April 21.

In Portugal, since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, there have been 17,117 deaths associated with Covid-19 out of 890,571 confirmed cases of infection, according to the Directorate-General of Health.

Worldwide, the pandemic has claimed at least 3,980,935 lives, resulting from more than 183.7 million cases of infection, according to the latest tally from Agence France-Presse.

Covid-19 is a respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the United Kingdom, India or South Africa.