António Costa believes that the countries of the European Union are beginning to realise that the increase in the number of Covid-19 cases in Portugal is very localised. Siza Vieira is confident that the country will return to the centre of foreign tourists' preferences.

The Prime Minister, António Costa said that he has been sensitising his European counterparts and considers that they are beginning to understand that there is a great disparity in the evolution of the pandemic on Portuguese territory. Today we have a country where the situation is practically very low and then we have 19 parishes, in more than 3.000, where there are a very significant number of new cases" he said on a trip to The Hague in the Netherlands.

António Costa believes that the efforts made to clarify the situation have worked. Belgium has already made a differentiation between Lisbon and the rest of the country. The Netherlands, which had put Oporto and Lisbon on the list of destinations to avoid, has already withdrawn Oporto and hopes that Ireland will do the same after the conversation it had with its Irish counterpart.

The Minister of State for the Economy and the Digital Transition believes that Portugal, "for its ability to present itself to the world as a safe destination", will once again be one of consumers' favourite destinations.

At the conference "Tourism in times of covid-19," organized jointly by news agencies Lusa and Spain's EFE, Pedro Siza Vieira said that the UK's decision to leave Portugal off the list of safe destinations has no scientific basis. He stressed, however, that during the sector's recovery process it is important to have "the capacity to support the thousands of companies, many of them small and medium-sized, which will have a very low turnover this year, which need to be preserved as much as possible in their knowledge because that is what makes a tourist destination successful.

The person responsible for the economic portfolio considers it necessary to invest in sustainability, digitalization and qualification of the sector's human resources to increase future competitiveness. "We will continue to invest in what are the country's new destinations, nature tourism [...], reconverting buildings into parks, [...] supporting the conversion of housing units to a system of more circular economy, greater energy efficiency," the minister assured.