Madeira to introduce new covid containment measures on Thursday

The Government of Madeira will move forward with new measures to contain Covid-19, given the increased number of infected in the archipelago, said the chief executive, Miguel Albuquerque, on Wednesday, indicating that the non-vaccinated will be the most penalized.

“The situation of non-vaccinated, at this moment, is very dangerous,” he said, clarifying that, of the 27 patients with Covid-19 currently hospitalized in the region, 60% are not vaccinated against the virus.

Miguel Albuquerque, who was speaking on the sidelines of a visit to a real estate company in Funchal, indicated that new measures to contain the pandemic will be announced on Thursday.

“The cases are growing throughout Europe, also in our country, and we here will have to take some measures, not of closure [of activities], but of control, to avoid the proliferation of infected,” he reinforced.

In recent weeks, Madeira has registered a daily average of 50 new cases of Covid-19 and also an increase in the number of deaths associated with the disease.

The President of the Regional Government said that some of the measures will be penalizing for those not vaccinated, as the inoculation rate against SARS-CoV-2 in Madeira is currently around 85%.

“We have people who repeatedly insist on not having the vaccine,” he said. And he warned: “60 per cent of patients in hospital at the moment are people who have not been vaccinated, some of them young. We have already had deaths of people who said that the vaccine was an invention of ‘Big Brother’ to control their lives. Some of these have already died, unlike [their] families, who have been vaccinated.”

Miguel Albuquerque explained that some of the new measures include restrictions on retirement homes, health services and public administration, as well as increased control at ports and airports in the archipelago, but assured that economic activities will not close, not even nightlife establishments.

“We have to continue to insist on the vaccination of everyone,” he said.

According to the latest data from the Regional Health Directorate, the Madeira archipelago, with around 251,000 inhabitants, has 407 active cases of Covid-19, out of a total of 12,804 confirmed since the start of the pandemic, and 83 deaths associated with the disease.