From garbage collectors to delivery drivers, the unsung heroes of Portugal’s coronavirus lockdown have been given a starring role in a video campaign recognising their superhuman role in keeping the capital city on its feet.
Launched by Lisbon’s Santo Antonio parish council on Friday, the video depicts often-overlooked workers going about their daily routines dressed up as their favourite superheroes, including Spider-Man and The Flash.
“The goal was to pay tribute to people who continue to work and continue to help those most in need,” Vasco Morgado, council president and the campaign’s mastermind, told Reuters yesterday.
The video has already been watched by nearly 1,000 people on YouTube.
Morgado said the global pandemic is changing people’s perceptions of certain jobs, which might have gone unappreciated in the past but are now more important than ever.
“Today is indispensable to have someone delivering food or the newspaper because you cannot go out,” he said.
The local council has a total of 64 people working on a rotating basis doing all sorts of jobs, from picking up trash and maintaining the city’s gardens to distributing food to elderly people stuck home.
Dressed up as DC villain Harley Quinn, council worker Ines Gomes said the campaign made her feel appreciated and motivated to continue to work through tough times.
“It was a great initiative,” she said.
Portugal, which has been under lockdown since March 18, has so far reported 23,392 cases of the new coronavirus, and 880 deaths, a small fraction of the toll in neighbouring Spain.
Portugal meanwhile hopes to conduct 70,000 coronavirus tests by the end of May at care homes, among whose residents around two in five of the country’s coronavirus deaths have occurred.
Around 17,000 tests have been conducted so far at some 200 homes.
The ramp-up, due to cover about 750 homes, aims to contain the spread of the outbreak there “by testing all workers and residents with symptoms”, the labour ministry said.
The Institute of Social Security estimates that around 150,000 people live in care homes across the country, so the planned tests would cover less than half of those residents.
Around 35,000 more live in unregistered homes, according to the Association of Domiciliary and Care Home Support (ALI).
“We should have the capacity to test everyone in care homes,” secretary of state for health Antonio Sales said on Friday, without explicitly committing to doing so.
Portugal has reported 23,392 cases of the new coronavirus, and 880 deaths.
Two in five of those who have died lived in care homes, the head of the healthy ministry’s health directorate, Graca Freitas, said on Wednesday.
Visits to care homes were banned when the country declared a lockdown on March 18, since extended to May 2.
The government said on March 30 that tests would be made available to all care workers and residents suspected of carrying the disease, and deployed the army to assist in disinfecting homes where cases were widespread.
Portugal’s testing rate is one of the highest in the world, ranking above Norway, Italy and Germany at 31,000 per million people.
“Increased testing has so far not reflected an increase in the rate of positive cases, which is a good sign,” Sales said.
Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Friday that even if the state of emergency was lifted next week, restrictions on movement would continue.
from Gulf Times https://ift.tt/2x9odyt
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