Recoveries overtake deaths, and what your boss can and can’t ask during telework
English language coronavirus news in Portugal on April 17, 2020.
Today we mark a positive milestone. For the first time, the number of people officially recovered from COVID-19 has passed the number of deaths. In fact, Daniela Sunde-Brown, my copy editor and sometimes designer, has added an extra row to the daily graphic to celebrate. The increases in both cases and deaths remain relatively flat compared to yesterday.
Portugal marks more recoveries than deaths for the first time
If you’ve been following for a while, you’ll know I haven’t really been talking about recoveries. That’s not because I want to focus on the bad news but because, according to a Público report from March 30, keeping those figures updated hasn’t really been top priority. Looking at the daily DGS updates, the journalist noticed the number of patients marked “recovered” hadn’t changed for five days, so he asked a pulmonologist what was up. The answer was that, most likely, the real number was much higher. Filipe Froes, coordinator of the Order of Doctors’ crisis office, explained patients needed to test negative twice to be marked as cured. With the priority given to detecting new cases, “no one would waste” two tests on proving a recovery, she said at the time.
It’s unclear how much has changed since then but there’s no doubt more tests are available and more are being carried out. Friday was the busiest day yet for testers, according to Secretary of State for Health, António Lacerda Sales with 15,400 undertaken, out of 274,000 undertaken since March 1, Diário de Notícias reports. I don’t know how many of those were aimed at identifying new cases and how many were meant to confirm recoveries. From what I can see it wasn’t addressed at today’s press conference. But the following three days, the number of recoveries stayed at 610 before it jumped to 917 today.
Finance Minister talks about a European recovery plan worth “trillions”
The emergency plan has been defined but the recovery plan is still to come, Público notes in this interview with Portuguese Finance Minister Mário Centeno. The interview, conducted in his capacity as president of the Eurogroup of EU finance ministers, has been translated into English, so I’d recommend you read the whole thing if you have time. It takes time and money for Portuguese papers to translate their work into English so the only way we’ll see more of this is if we show our interest in it. Mr Centeno says “we’re talking trillions for the recovery plan” but that “the Euro today has an incomparably greater protection network than it had” during the euro debt crisis that hit Portugal and several other southern countries so hard.
What your boss can and can’t ask of you while working from home
In new guidelines, the Portuguese National Data Protection Commission says your boss can not control your activities or direct you to keep your camera on while teleworking, Público reports. Confronted with several questions since the government recommended residents work from home if possible, the CNPD (Comissão Nacional de Protecção de Dados) today says your employer can register what time you start, finish and break for lunch. But they can’t use applications to track how much time you spend on each task, which would be an “excessive restriction” on a worker’s private life. The commission specifically names TimeDoctor, Hubstaff, Timing, ManicTime, TimeCamp, Toggl and Harvest. Your boss can still give you objectives, reporting obligations and set meetings, the CNPD says.
In brief
Remember the 169 foreign citizens (from 29 different countries) who were evacuated from a Lisbon hotel due to a COVID-19 outbreak? They have been taken to an air base for quarantine. 139 tested positive
WHO says Portugal’s numbers show the country acted in a “rationally correct” manner to control the pandemic
Tourism Portugal has given 960 micro-businesses €7.5 million from a €60 million fund. It’s preparing to launch a campaign to encourage tourism once the contention measures allow it
Portugal will analyse wastewater to detect SARS-CoV-2, following the lead of the Netherlands
On a lighter note
It’s a bit strange to think that a show about people being locked away in a house has been delayed because everyone is locked away in their houses. But I guess that’s the world we’re living in. In any case, it looks like Portuguese TV network TVI is trying to turn quarantine into quarantinis when it comes to Big Brother 2020. The debut, already delayed by a month, has been set down for primetime on April 26, Público reports. The producers are turning a 14-day quarantine for contestants in individual apartments into TV content, which they’re dubbing BB Zoom, for obvious reasons. After the quarantine, contestants must pass two coronavirus tests to get into the main house in Ericeira. Asked whether the risk that motivated the program’s delay had been eliminated, TVI program director Nuno Santos said the network felt like it had taken the right decision and done everything it could to get the situation under control.