“It’s a small thing,” admitted Amélia António, “but it’s a way to celebrate April 25th and to give a hug to everyone, our friends, our associates, our countrymen, on a day that has to be celebrated in a different way because we are living a different year “due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The work, in audiovisual format, will be sent to all associates and, in parallel, published on Facebook, he explained.
The appointment of the date in the old territory administered by Portugal will be different because, “even today, to bring together a larger group of people there are many limitations”, he justified, referring to the appeals of the Macau Government to continue to practice social distancing and avoid crowding people to reduce the risk of contagion.
“So, playing it safe, it was decided that it was not feasible to do the normal format”, but “to do nothing is out of the question,” said the president of Casa de Portugal in Macau.
Regarding the celebrations to be held in Portugal, Amélia António agrees with the decision to be held in parliament.
“I think it is very good that there [the celebrations] take place in parliament (…) because it has always been done and there are conditions, there are also rules, and there are people limitations”, he said, even because the Assembly of the Republic “has worked for what is needed “.
For the solemn session of April 25, the parliament had decided last week to hold the solemn session with one third of the deputies (77 of the 230 parliamentarians) and less invited, with Ferro Rodrigues’ office then estimating that about 130 were present people, compared to 700 last year.
However, and after some controversy surrounding these celebrations, at Tuesday’s meeting of the leaders’ conference, spokeswoman Maria da Luz Rosinha said that the largest parliamentary groups would reduce the number of deputies initially planned, predicting that in the next Saturday “less than a hundred people” will be present, including parliamentarians, guests, officials and journalists.
In Portugal, 820 people died of the 22,353 confirmed as infected, and there are 1,143 recovered cases, according to the Directorate-General for Health.
In Macau, 45 cases have been identified since the outbreak began, but more than half have already been discharged. The territory has not registered new cases since April 9.
Globally, according to a report by the France-Presse news agency, the Covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 190,000 deaths and infected more than 2.6 million people in 193 countries and territories.
More than 708,000 patients were considered cured.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
To combat the pandemic, governments sent 4.5 billion people home (more than half the world’s population), ended non-essential trade and drastically reduced air traffic, paralyzing entire sectors of the world economy.
