**5. Conclusions**

Having had close or casual contact with a person with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection, including family members, had a statistically significant relationship with the presence of psychological distress.

The predictor variables for psychological distress were sex, educational background, living with children or young people under 16 years of age, number of symptoms presented in the last 14 days, quarantine for presenting symptoms, having had contact with a person or material suspected of being infected by COVID-19, and having had close contact with a person with confirmed COVID-19 infection. The protective variables for psychological distress were being in telework and a good self-assessment of health status in the last 14 days.

These results show that there are factors that predispose the Portuguese population to develop psychological distress in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting their well-being and mental health. These should be considered when carrying out intervention programs suitable for pandemic situations, since they can design programs for the prevention of psychological distress in a pandemic context and psychological intervention programs when distress is already present, with the aim of promoting public health in general, and mental health in particular.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; data curation, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; formal analysis, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; funding acquisition, R.A.-C.; investigation, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; methodology, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; project administration, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., C.R.-F., and J.F.; resources, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; software, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; supervision, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; validation, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; visualization, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; writing—original draft, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F.; writing—review and editing, F.F., L.J., J.G.-S., R.M., R.A.-C., C.R.-F., and J.F. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was funded by Portuguese national funds provided by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) (UIDB/05704/2020 and UIDP/05704/2020).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The ethical principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki have been followed. The permission of the participants was obtained through a written informed consent in which they expressed their voluntary desire to participate in the study. Data were recorded anonymously and treated confidentially. The project was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Atlântica-Instituto Universitário.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** All data are available within this article.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
