Madeira now considered ‘low risk’ on EU travel map
According to ECDC's update, Madeira registered an improvement by being considered as low risk, which refers to territories with fewer than 50 new cases and a positivity rate of less than 4%.
Madeira has moved into the green, low-risk category for Covid-19 on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) map, which supports travel decisions in the European Union (EU), with mainland Portugal and the Azores in orange.
The green category is the best of the epidemiological situation on the ECDC map, which combines the reporting rates of Covid-19 cases over the past 14 days, the number of tests performed, and the total number of positives updated weekly on Thursday.
In this Thursday’s update, the archipelago of Madeira registered an improvement by being considered as low risk, which refers to territories with fewer than 50 new cases and a positivity rate of less than 4%, or less than 75 cases, but with a positivity rate of less than 1%.
Mainland Portugal and the Azores are considered to be at moderate risk (orange), referring to places where the notification rate of new infections is between 50 and 75 per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days, and the positivity rate of the tests is 1% or between 75 and 200 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and the positivity rate of the tests is 4% or more.
Last February, due to the high number of infections with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes the Covid-19 disease, Portugal was even in the dark red category of the ECDC maps, used for areas where the virus was at very high levels.
These maps from the European agency follow a system of traffic lights on the spread of Covid-19 in the EU, starting from green (favourable situation) through orange, red and dark red (very dangerous situation).
They serve as an aid to member states on what restrictions to apply to travel within the EU.
In mid-June, the Council of the EU adopted a recommendation for a coordinated approach to travel, proposing that vaccinated and recovered people with Covid-19 should not be subjected to restrictive measures such as quarantine or testing.
Covid-19 has caused at least 4,861,478 deaths worldwide, among more than 238.59 million infections by the new coronavirus recorded since the start of the pandemic, according to the most recent assessment by Agence France-Presse.
In Portugal, since March 2020, 18,065 people have died, and there have been 1,077,186 cases of infection, according to data from the country’s national health authority, the DGS.
