"It is necessary to maintain the measures of containment, and it was a unanimous opinion. Returning to that image of a week ago: it is important to keep the pressure on the spring so that the spring does not rise. As a priority for our immediate future", declared Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to journalists at Infarmed in Lisbon.

Asked about the renewal of the state of emergency, the President of the Republic reinforced this message: "I do not hide that from today's meeting it is very clear how important it is to give a sign of maintenance of what was acquired and it was an achievement of the Portuguese that cannot and should not be lost".

The head of state, who was speaking at the end of the second technical presentation session on the "Epidemiological situation of covid-19 in Portugal", defended that the evolution of the outbreak "gives reasons to the Portuguese to continue to do what they have done and gives reason to policy makers to decide in the immediate future in the same sense as they decided in the immediate past".