healthcare Article The COVID-19 Pandemic Strain: Teleworking and Health Behavior Changes in the Portuguese Context Teresa Forte 1 , Gonçalo Santinha 2, * and Sérgio A. Carvalho 3,4   Citation: Forte, T.; Santinha, G.; Carvalho, S.A. The COVID-19 Pandemic Strain: Teleworking and Health Behavior Changes in the Portuguese Context. Healthcare 2021, 9, 1151. https://doi.org/10.3390/ healthcare9091151 Academic Editor: Pedram Sendi Received: 29 July 2021 Accepted: 30 August 2021 Published: 3 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal; teresaforte@ua.pt 2 GOVCOPP, Department of Social, Political and Territorial, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal 3 Hei-Lab: Digital Human-Environment Interaction Lab, School of Psychology and Life Sciences, Lusófona University, 1749-024 Lisbon, Portugal 4 Centre for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive and Behavioural Intervention (CINNEIC), University of Coimbra, 3000-115 Coimbra, Portugal; sergio.andcarvalho@gmail.com * Correspondence: g.santinha@ua.pt Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a societal essay, based on thorough measures of individual and communitarian protection, ranging from compulsory social distancing to quaran- tine. Following WHO recommendations, more or less strict policies were adopted by governments worldwide in order to mitigate public health risks. In Portugal, the first state of emergency was declared on 18 March 2020 and renewed until 2 May 2020. During this time, most citizens stayed in quarantine with practical implications regarding their work and daily activities. This exploratory study, conducted within the pandemic crisis context in Portugal, intends to grasp specificities of the adaptation to the lock down and social isolation/distancing measures, concerning, specifically, teleworking conditions and physical activity practice. Data was collected from March to May 2020 through an online survey from 1148 participants of different age groups and literacy. Considering that COVID-19 features a mutual feedback loop of disease and social dynamics—governmental measures, civic adjustments, and individual coping—to know more about what was featured, the first wave may provide some cues to ensure a more efficient co-operation among social actors and, ultimately, tailor better public policies towards teleworking, online distance learning, and the promotion of healthy behaviours. Keywords: COVID-19; coronavirus; SARS-Cov-2; teleworking; physical exercise; health policies 1. Introduction The implementation of measures to contain and delay the spike in infection of COVID- 19 has resulted in major changes in both work and social lives, allowing us to test, in a natural setting experiment, different societal iterations. Although symptoms of COVID-19 are similar to those of other strains of coron- aviruses (e.g., fever, dry cough, fatigue) asymptomatic individuals are able to spread the virus [1].The global outbreak of COVID-19 has thus prompted most countries to implement an array of measures to contain or delay the spread of the virus, from self-isolation or quarantine to public health guidance (e.g., hand washing, respiratory etiquette, social dis- tancing) [2]. Although most countries have advised their citizens who display symptoms to self-isolate for 7–14 days, and practice social distancing to those without symptoms, the implementation of overall top-down governmental measures have differed according to each country (e.g., [3,4]). In Portugal, the first two confirmed cases of COVID-19 were re- ported on 2 March 2020 [5]. On the 18 March the President declared the state of emergency (President Decree no. 14-A/2020), which was consecutively renewed until 30 April with a positive impact in the number of new cases per day in this first phase, as evidenced in Figure 1. Healthcare 2021, 9, 1151. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9091151 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare