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Portugal on Saturday extended the suspension of flights from Britain and Brazil to March 1, in an attempt to check the spread of Covid variants first detected in those countries.
“In the context of the epidemiological situation… all flights from Brazil and the United Kingdom” are suspended, the interior ministry said.
On Friday Portugal extended border controls with neighbouring Spain until March 1.
In January Portugal suffered the worst rate of coronavirus infections in the world and since January 15 the country has been under a general lockdown.
There were a record 16,500 new cases on January 28 in the country of 10 million people. But the daily figure has started to decrease in recent days.
Friday’s official figures showed 2,854 new coronavirus cases and 149 fatalities over the previous 24 hours.