Pandemic in Portugal drops from critical level to alarm situation – Observer
Pandemic in Portugal drops from critical level to alarm situation
Portugal lowered the level to the alarm situation without evaluation by the Instituto Superior Técnico and the Ordem dos Médicos, which means a critical indicator of the pressure on health services.
According to the latest data from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), the indicator that assesses the risk of the pandemic for health services is now at 7.59, already below the threshold of the alert level set at 80 points.
“The forecast is for a very large pandemic today to the next few days”, said the indicator of this date by mathematician Henrique Oliveira, one of those responsible for the preparation and daily update of this indicator of the covid-19 pandemic.
The epidemiological situation is “very favorable and the paradigm has changed”, said the IST professor, for whom “now the measures no longer limit the growth and decrease of cases”, since the number of infections will decrease across the country. have reached “saturation” — people who have already been infected or who are vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
This indicator is based on five parameters – new cases, deaths, inpatients in wards and intensive care, communicable disease (Rt) and composed of a probability of infections – which are composed of a scale that has as criteria the 80 points of the alert level and the 100 points of the critical level.
When this assessment exceeds 100 points, the “National Health Service has to allocate more and starts having to move patients who do not have covid-19 to the background. There are many treatments that have started to be postponed”, explained Henrique Oliveira.
As of 21 January, the assessment indicator of the two institutions reached a value above 10 points (critical level), having reached a maximum of 105.8 in this pandemic wave on 24 January.
Since, the value of the indicator has been decreasing, reflecting the reduction in the number of cases, then the probability and the transmissibility index (Rt) of the coronavirus, now reaching 79.59.
In the recent wave, Portugal exceeded the critical level for the second time in this assessment since the beginning of the pandemic, with the first occurring between the end of October 2020 and February 2021, when the greatest pressure on health services was recorded. .