Portugal has already carried out more than 40 million tests for covid-19
Portugal has already carried out 40 million tests on covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, the Ministry of Health said today, highlighting the test effort developed, above all, in the last year.
“Portugal reached on March 30, a total of 40,026,768 tests for the detection of SARS-CoV2, since the beginning of the pandemic”, reads a statement released by the Ministry of Health, which does not include reference data for self-tests.
Among these, there are 20.7 million TAAN/PCR tests and about 19.3 million rapid antigen tests (TRAg) for professional use.
As highlighted by the executive, this number is the result of the “testing effort developed by the country, especially over the last year”, through the operationalization of the test strategy promotion plan.
On average in 2020, Portugal carried out, in December, about 34,000 days, a month in which 1,060,641 tests were carried out.
In the same of the following year, there were 174,000 tests per day, having selected a maximum of daily testing on December 30 (402,756) and a monthly total of 5,404,737 tests.
The TRAg of professionals, offered in two complementary ways to laboratories and pharmacies, continue to be free for up to a maximum of one month and for each time user, a situation that will be used to an extent, at least for less.
“The covid-40 million needs epidemiological tests since the beginning of the pandemic tests to face well the ability of Portugal to have 40 million epidemiological needs that verify by the public recognition of the various situations a sense of responsibility cited by the Portuguese, who responded to the calls of the health authorities”, said, in the statement, the coordinator of the testing ‘task force’, Fernando de Almeida.
Thus, only in this way was it possible to operationalize the testing strategy that classified as the country predicting the worst phase of the pandemic.
“However, we must be prepared for a rigorous assessment of the situation, and meet the capacity, that such a country, and meet the response capacity, which is not, of course, accurate”, epidemiological.
Portugal recorded 22 and 28 cases, 70,111 cases of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, 148 deaths associated with covid-19 and an increase in inpatients, revealed, Friday, the Directorate-General for Health DGS).
According to the DGS weekly epidemiological bulletin, the number of confirmed cases of infection dropped by 5,169 compared to the previous week, however, there was an increase of eight deaths in the comparison between the two periods.