Portuguese voters who will be quarantined during the early parliamentary elections on January 30 will be able to break their self-isolation to go to the polls, the government announced today, which has already scheduled a vote for this Sunday. .
The announcement comes a day after Portugal, which has nearly 90% of its population of 10 million fully vaccinated, recorded a daily record of 43,729 infections from COVID-19, a number that is rising from the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.
Hospital admissions and mortality remain well below the levels seen in previous peaks.
In order to prevent those voters who have been infected with Covid-19 or are considered a case of spreading the virus, they will be asked to go to the polls at a set time, first one hour before the closing of the polling stations, ie from 18.00 to 19.00, he announced. in a press conference the Minister of Interior and Justice Francesca Van Dunem.
Recommendation is optional. Voters must wear a mask, keep a distance, and can leave home only to vote.
The staff working in the polling stations will be provided with protective equipment.
“We need a social contract that allows everyone to vote safely,” she said, urging those in self-isolation not to use public transport to get to polling stations, but to go on foot or in their own vehicle.
In the September municipal elections or in the voting for the presidential elections last January, which was organized during a period of severe quarantine and while the country was plagued by the pandemic, this possibility had not been opened.
“The problem we had in the previous elections has been alleviated as we now have a lot more people infected,” Van Dunem said.
With the Omicron variant more contagious, the country now has nearly 600,000 quarantined people, two-thirds of whom are potential voters out of a total of 9.3 million registered voters in Portugal.
The country currently ranks 5th in the European Union in terms of the number of new cases detected in the past two weeks but, thanks to a record rate of vaccination coverage, ranks 17th in the number of deaths relative to its population.
More than 200,000 voters, including outgoing Prime Minister Antonio Costa, have already registered to cast their ballots ahead of Sunday’s vote, a week before the official election date.
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