Minister says “there is no reason” for the UK to impose quarantine on return

The Minister of Home Affairs, Eduardo Cabrita, says that “there is no reason” for the application of quarantine on the return to the United Kingdom, but he did not want to anticipate the British Government’s announcement about the air corridor with Portugal.

“We are, in particular with the United Kingdom, highlighting what is obvious: Portugal has better public health indicators and better pandemic response indicators than the United Kingdom. Therefore, there is no reason, according to the comparative criteria, for the existence of any application of quarantine rules on the return to the United Kingdom “, said the minister, on the sidelines of the presentation of the” Algarve Seguro “program, in Faro.

At stake is the list of countries for which the UK will create travel corridors that prevent compliance with the quarantine imposed due to the covid-19 pandemic, whose announcement will be made next Monday.

Portugal is one of the countries that has expressed interest in negotiating an “air corridor” with the United Kingdom to be able to receive British tourists, who represented almost 20% of the total in 2019.

According to some British newspapers, Portugal is considered “high risk” and there is an “intense debate” about its inclusion in the list of countries with air corridors with the United Kingdom.

Without anticipating the British Government’s response, Eduardo Cabrita stressed that “it is enough to compare the health data” to verify that, “manifestly, the risk is not in Portugal“.

In his speech, the minister had already accused “some press from other countries” of, with “not entirely clean competitiveness”, pointing out specific data that “do not question the response” of the Algarve to covid-19, recalling that in the region there are no patients admitted to intensive care.

Regarding other states that have placed restrictions on the entry of passengers on flights originating in Portugal, the Minister of Internal Administration underlined that the country has been transmitting “vivid disagreement” in relation to these decisions.

“Without any basis, they maintain discriminatory practices that violate what was defined in the meetings” between the 27 member states of the European Union, he added about those countries.

Asked also about the cover of the Spanish newspaper “El País”, which reported the “confinement of three million Portuguese”, Eduardo Cabrita stressed that it is a false information.

“Clearly, there are not three million citizens confined. We are talking about a group of 19 parishes for which there is a civic duty to collect, which means – as we know, we have all gone through that phase in a national framework – a duty of circumscribing trips to the workplace and the acquisition of essential food items “, he maintained.

At the Council of Ministers on Thursday, the Government approved the civic duty of home collection in 19 parishes in five of the 18 municipalities in the Metropolitan Area of ​​Lisbon, namely Lisbon, Sintra, Amadora, Odivelas and Loures, as of July 1 .

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