President Portuguese Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa tested positive for new coronavirus and canceled his entire public agenda, two weeks before the January 24 presidential election, for which he is widely favored, the presidency announced Monday evening.
The 72-year-old head of state was “Asymptomatic” and isolated himself in the residential part of the presidential palace in Lisbon, his services said in a statement.
The electoral campaign of the seven candidates in the running, which officially started on Sunday, was already reduced to the strict minimum and suspended, with the announcement of a new confinement to curb the upsurge in the number of new cases.
General containment
With 122 dead in 24 hours and nearly 4,000 people hospitalized, the Covid-19 pandemic reached new records on Monday in Portugal (for 10 million inhabitants).
Prime Minister Antonio Costa indicated that the socialist government was preparing to announce on Wednesday “Something very similar to the first confinement in March”. “I think there is no alternative to general confinement”, had also warned the head of state on Saturday, during an electoral debate.
All the polls predict the re-election of the conservative president from the first round of a ballot marked by the absence of a candidate officially supported by the socialists in power.
Last Wednesday, the head of state spent a few hours in “Administrative segregation” upon learning that a member of his entourage had tested positive, but the president had then tested negative and had not been placed in quarantine, because his contact with the person concerned had been considered “Low risk”.
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