en 
The Municipality of Loulé wants to count the daily overnight stays in hotels so that guests are added to the residents and the calculation of the incidence rate for Covid-19 is proportional to the real number of people who are staying.
Loulé Council argues that the ratio is being "wrongly calculated", since foreign tourists are not considered in the total population, but if they are infected, they are included in the county's positive cases.
"This situation will be easily corrected if overnight stays in hotels in each municipality are accounted for and this number is added to the population of residents".
For the Municipality of Loulé, the fact that the cases of national residents are counted in the municipalities where they are detected and not in those of residence “penalises the municipalities with more tourism”, as is the case of Loulé.
Meanwhile, the Municipality of Albufeira has also requested a review of the criteria for calculating the incidence rate of Covid-19, claiming that the ratio is being “artificially inflated” due to the presence of tourists in the county.
In a statement, the municipality estimates that “about twice the number of residents” should be in the municipality, which is measurable, “by the 30 percent increase in waste collection compared to May, the huge increase in consumption and the large increase in the number of requests for services”.
“The Council of Albufeira demands a review of these criteria and recalls that this assessment, applied by the Government, will generate a huge slowdown in the regional and local economy and will have serious consequences for the Algarve, in general, and for the municipality of Albufeira, in particular.”
Regretting that such an important ratio is “artificially inflated”, the Council of Albufeira claims that the adaptation of criteria to the reality of municipalities that make a living from tourist activity is “fair” and “urgent”.
“This fact was addressed by me in one of the face-to-face conversations I had with the secretary of State for Tourism, as well as with the president of the Algarve Tourism Region and other regional authorities, in order to resolve the situation that is very damaging to our region”, said José Carlos Rolo.
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The numbers are indeed badly evolving. Too bad and scary.
Filtering the temporary tourist wave out of the statistics is probably a bad idea.
Short stay tourists in vacation mode tend to be more relaxed than at home, with looser behaviour too. (One only needs to observe airline passengers when they come off the planes at Faro airport.)
Once they are let go in the general population they become part of it - at least statistically for Covid purposes. Perhaps the Loulé municipality should err on the safe side. Better safe than sorry?
By HDL from Algarve on 25 Jun 2021, 08:28
According to the Lisbon Court PCR tests are useless to determine 'positive' cases. Still they continue using them to keep you in fear. The Cov-19 virus was never 'isolated'. Instead it was generated by a computer model! To-date no one can show the so called virus. These statistics have never been right. Testing was never proportional to the total number of inhabitants per municipality. So in that respect it makes no difference if we have tourists or not. It was useless anyway. If you look up the number of tests taken over the previous weeks, you will also see that they have increased. There's also no sharing of the number of cycles. The higher the cycles, the more false positives. If you test positive you need to demand another test "genomic sequencing". Same sample will be used but it requires a decent amount of the 'virus'. You'll be surprised with the outcome. India's Government said that there's no such 'variant' in India. What's next??? Injuries and death of vaccines are high but ignored and many more to come once we get into the winter. All to be used as this very dangerous virus! Over a 150.000 doctors and scientists worldwide speak up and end up being censored. Do you still buy into this?
By Ana from Algarve on 25 Jun 2021, 08:59
make Beja a silicon valley and don't rely on tourism simple solution.
By johny from Algarve on 25 Jun 2021, 11:36
Ana, you are severely misinformed about the vaccines and epidemiology.
I urge you to please go check what the actual experts say and step out of your bubble of misinformation.
I don't hate you, you're just wrong.
By João from Porto on 25 Jun 2021, 11:49
Ana, you have made half a dozen good points there. Well done! Particularly the point about cycles, which is not generally understood by Joao Publico.
By Clive from Other on 25 Jun 2021, 23:23
I cannot understand why such importance is placed upon the results of testing assymptomatic people. Surely the only relevant statistics are the numbers of hospitalised and dying people in determining the seriousness of any infection.
By Roy Carpenter from Algarve on 26 Jun 2021, 10:43
@clive Yes, I only believe things when there sufficient evidence for something, doing otherwise is by definition irrational.
I'm sorry if your standards of evidence are not the same of people who spent their lives studying relevant subjects such as epidemiology, but that's not my issue - until you start voting on that irrationality of course.
Again, nothing against you. You're just flat out wrong in your scientific illiteracy.
By João from Porto on 26 Jun 2021, 11:22
And then you read this today:
“People over the age of 50 who have been fully vaccinated are three times more likely to die from the Delta variant than those who haven’t received any vaccines” (this is a headline taken from Swiss online ‘uncut news’ yesterday).
That's why healthy people don't want a vaccine.
By Fred Doe from Algarve on 27 Jun 2021, 09:51
Is there a vaccine for bad driving and barking dogs?
By Martin from Algarve on 27 Jun 2021, 10:11
There is no Delta Variant. It’s the side effects from the vaccine.
By Daco from Algarve on 27 Jun 2021, 15:54
Ana, spot on! So many inconsistencies with this alleged “pandemic” but it seems the majority prefer to believe the doom and gloom peddled by MSM instead of using logic and critical thought. Testing healthy people to get case numbers up etc. We need to live life and let the fearful ones stay at home hiding behind the sofa. Enough is enough! And get rid of these useless masks as well! They are only there to reinforce the fear.
By SS from Algarve on 27 Jun 2021, 17:11