Portugal is the eighth country of the 27 member states that has less stringent measures. The high vaccination rate – 90% of the Portuguese population already has a complete vaccination – may justify this choice of the government.

It is possible to compare the level of restrictions imposed in the context of the pandemic by different EU countries through the “Government Stringency Index”, published by Our World in Data, which is calculated based on data from the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. This index assesses a total of 9 response indicators that include restrictions imposed on schools, workplaces, travel, public events, social gatherings, transport, internal mobility, among others and also the policies adopted regarding vaccination, mask use and testing.

What the map of the European space shows us is that Germany is the EU country that currently has the strictest restrictions in the context of the pandemic, having reached an index of 84.26 on a scale from 0 to 100. Leading the group of countries with less severe measures is Hungary, with a score of just 11.11 out of 100 and then Estonia (34.26) and Finland (34.72).

Portugal is also part of this group of countries with less stringent measures against Covid-19, having reached a severity index of 40.74.