COVID 19 | Last phase of lockdown easing in Portugal

After consecutive renovations of the State of Emergency since November 9 th , Portugal will move to a State of Calamity legal framework and the Government anticipated the last phase of the lockdown easing plan for Saturday, 1 st of May. The new rules to face the Covid 19 pandemic will be applied in the majority of the municipalities – 270.

Restaurants, culture and retail are the main sectors where the rules will be relaxed. Companies across the country should continue to apply remote work until the 16 th of May. While announcing the new rules decided by the Council of Ministers this Thursday, 29 th April, the Prime Minister António Costa affirmed: «the situation cannot be considered solved. We must all avoid contacts that are not necessary, so that pandemic does not worsen again». From now on, the pandemic risk of the municipalities will be assessed on a weekly basis. A plan for the coming months is being prepared and should be presented by the end of May.

In the last 24 hours, the health authorities registered 470 new cases of Covid-19 and one related
death. Below is a summary of the new key rules.

MEASURES to be implemented from the 1^st may:

• Opening of land borders with Spain, closed since the 31^st January
• Restaurants, cafes and pastry shops may be open until 10:30 pm, including weekends, where the current rule was to close at 1:00 pm
• Cultural events allowed until 10:30 pm
• All shops and shopping centres can operate until 9pm during the week and 7pm on weekends and public holidays
• Remote work, when possible, ismandatory until the 16 th of May
• Gymnasiums can fully function
• Private celebrations such as weddings may again have up to 50% of the capacity of the space where they are held. Until the end of the third phase of deconfinement, the maximum capacity for these events was 25%

Tiago Vidal

Partner and Managing Director LLYC Portugal

Responsible for the operations of LLYC in Portugal, Tiago Vidal leads a team of experts responsible for the development and implementation of Reputation Management strategies, Communications and Public Affairs in leading companies in sectors such as Finance, Real Estate, Energy, Transport and Logistics, Distribution, Automotive, and FMCG. He was previously Head of Corporate Communications at Sonae Sierra, where he led all B2B communication activities in 14 countries. During his 16 years at Sonae Sierra, Tiago was responsible for reputation management, brand, corporate marketing and PR, relationship with stakeholders and crisis communications, including IPO’s, mergers and acquisitions.