After so many months in which they have been shut, authorities appear ready to release bars and discotheques from their enforced idleness as a way of “stimulating young people to take up the vaccine”. This was the message to Público and Rádio Renascença this morning from secretary of State for parliamentary affairs, Duarte Cordeiro. In the same interview, he said it was “not yet possible” to give citizens a “Freedom Day” from the pandemic (as the UK is supposedly doing on Monday), although there does finally seem to be “a slowdown in the rate of weekly increases” of case numbers in the Lisbon/ Vale de Tejo region – indicating that this area, up till now the country’s transmission ‘trouble spot’, may be reaching its peak of new infections.
