Portugal tightens lockdown as Covid deaths surge

Ambulances with Covid patients are queuing up at Lisbon's Santa Maria hospital

Portugal has tightened its coronavirus lockdown, banning all non-essential travel abroad and hiring foreign medics, as hospitals struggle and deaths reach record highs.

The country's pandemic death rate is now the highest in the EU.

"We really have to stop the surge under way. Now," said newly re-elected President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in a TV address to the nation.

Portugal reported a record 303 deaths and 16,432 new cases on Thursday.

Ambulances carrying Covid patients are queuing up at Portugal's hospitals.

The president, re-elected last Sunday, decreed that the state of emergency would be extended for two more weeks, until 14 February.

Schools were due to reopen on 5 February, but that will not happen - instead students will have to continue studying at home, and online classes will begin on 8 February.

Portugal has the highest Covid-related death rate in the EU for the past 14 days: 247.5 per million inhabitants, the EU's European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reports.

The next highest are Slovenia (208.5) and the Czech Republic (205). The figure for neighbouring Spain is 84.

In order to tackle medical staff shortages, Portugal's health service will hire medics with foreign qualifications on one-year contracts.

More than 23,000 Portuguese medics have been infected with Covid-19, of whom about half have recovered, Spain's Efe news agency reports.

Flights are already very limited, but now Portugal has suspended flights to and from its former colony Brazil, with which it has especially close ties. A new coronavirus variant emerged in Brazil last July.

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The UK has banned arrivals from Portugal since 15 January.

Spain and Portugal are also tightening checks along their land border.

The vaccine shortages affecting much of Europe are also hitting Portugal: it now expects its first phase of vaccinations to take up to two months longer than planned.