Covid-19: Portugal classified as very high risk by the European Center for Disease Control | Coronavirus
Portugal is ranked in the worst risk category of covid-19 by the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) – painted in dark red on the map – after the Azores have increased in notifications and positive cases.
In the weekly update of ECDC released this Wednesday, mainland Portugal, Madeira and the Azores appear in the worst category of the “traffic light” system, which indicates a very high risk, referring to regions where the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes covid-19, has a high dissemination. Last week, the Azores were classified in the orange level.
On the ECDC map on travel in the European Union, only Romania (which appears in orange) is series in red and dark red, even a part of the country identified in green, being the country with the lowest rate of notifications.
The colors on the ECDC map represent a combination of covid-19 case reporting rates in the last 14 days, number of tests performed, and total positives.
Covid-19 has caused more than 5.41 million deaths worldwide since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report by Agence France-Presse.
In Portugal, since March 2020, 18,921 people have died and 1,330,158 cases of infection have been recorded, according to data from the Directorate-General for 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, an Omicron, considered worrisome and highly contagious by the World Health Organization (WHO), has been detected in southern Africa, but since the South African health authorities issued the alert on 24 November, they have been notified of changes in by less than 110 countries, being dominant in Portugal.