“The Government yesterday approved a bill that allows the sale of self-tests in supermarkets,” said the minister at the press conference after the end of the Council of Ministers meeting.

According to the official, the measure will reinforce the identification of positive cases of Covid-19, at a time when Portugal remains in the red zone of the risk matrix and the epidemiological situation continues to worry the government.

“We are continuing what I have been calling attention to in recent weeks here, which is a race against time between the daily widening vaccination process and the evolution of the pandemic”, stressed Mariana Vieira da Silva, stating that it is necessary, therefore, “an insistence on the process of testing”.

"When we look at the situation of our country in the risk matrix, we see that the situation is getting worse. Today on the mainland we have an incidence [of new cases of infection] of 346.5 per 100,000 inhabitants and a rate of transmission (Rt) of 1.15", she added.

In Portugal, since the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, 17,187 people have died and 920,200 cases of infection have been registered, according to the Directorate-General for Health.