“There is still no international certificate approved by WHO [Organização Mundial de Sáude], but our vaccine cards with the two doses are enough to use anywhere, there are no restrictions, “said Furtado, also coordinator of the multi-sector commission for preventing and combating covid-19, after a meeting in Luanda.

The minister thus commented on the information circulated on social networks giving account of Angolan citizens including digital certificates that had been rejected in Portugal, which were not true.

“The vaccines are valid, the certificates are valid, the vaccines we are taking are the vaccines we are taking in Europe as well. Problem with the certification “of the Russian vaccine, at international level, that the Angolan authorities are trying to overcome.

The official said that the Angolan government contacted the embassy in Portugal to learn about the situation, with the information being transmitted that the only case in which there was a complaint was not due to the lack of a certificate but to the lack of a pre-shipment test, which is also mandatory.

“We are also having the same demand and what will have happened in Portugal, there is nothing alarmist, because, out of thousands, a single person does not represent the meaning of global thinking” on this matter, he stressed.

The digital certificates issued by Angola “are valid in any part of the world”, whether in Portugal or any other country, guaranteed Francisco Furtado, defending the approval of an international certificate to eliminate these doubts.

The national director of Public Health, Helga Freitas, revealed that Angola has already transcribed 1,361 digital vaccination certificates against covid-19 issued by other countries, including 325 from Portugal.

Covid-19 has caused at least 5,233,111 deaths worldwide, among more than 263.61 million infections by the new coronavirus registered since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the Agence France-Presse.

In Portugal, since March 2020, 18,492 people have died and 1,157,352 cases of infection have been recorded, according to data from the General Directorate of Health.

The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in several countries.

A new variant, Omicron, classified as “worrying” by the World Health Organization (WHO), has been detected in southern Africa, but since South African health authorities raised the alert on 24 November, infections have been reported in some from 30 countries from all continents, including Portugal.