″ We cannot underestimate. ″ Researcher concerned about increasing rate of increase in Portugal
The researcher Miguel Castanho does not hide that these data on the incidence rate, which is already above the red line, are quite disturbing.
“This is worrying data in the sense that even the most moderate and mild disease has social consequences. There are many sick people and this is a disturbance in the lives of families, for the economy, and we cannot forget about the prolonged Covid. we can underestimate what is, in fact, a very high incidence”, explained to TSF Miguel Brown.
The specialist at the Institute of Molecular Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon asks us not to underestimate Covid’s growing incidence rate, not least because Christmas is just around the corner and the time for contagion.
“Christmas is coming and we know that it is a favorable time for contagion in the way we live it, of great mobility, encounter and coexistence within closed spaces. Therefore, now we have a circumstance that is particularly delicate in terms of a pandemic. we are observing are a trend that is already behind but, at the same time, we are getting closer to Christmas and this factor that is behind it adds up to circumstantial and local factors that can aggravate the situation, “said the researcher.
About the first death associated with the new variant of Covid, registered in the United Kingdom and revealed this Monday by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, the investigator speaks, above all, of a psychological moment that is quite important.
“We still don’t know much. There are some signs and the strongest of them is that of transmissibility. It seems safe to predict since, in fact, transmissibility is increased in this variant. Everything else is still relatively premature. Of course, it is now an important psychological moment, which is the death of a patient in the United Kingdom, but which, despite everything, is not enough to build the whole story, not least because we don’t have many elements about this patient”, added Miguel Castanho.
The United Kingdom is the country with the highest number of deaths from Covid-19 in Europe, 146,439 since the beginning of the pandemic, with 81.3% of the population vaccinated with two doses of the vaccine and 40.2% with a third dose.
Covid-19 has caused at least 5,300,591 deaths worldwide, among more than 269.02 million coronavirus infections recorded since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report from the Agence France-Presse (AFP).
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 the South African health authorities raised the alert on 24 November, infections in hairs have been reported. at least 57 countries from all continents, including Portugal.
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