Government will reevaluate mask use in the coming days
Lacerda Sales says that it is important to spend the Easter period, taking into account that it is a time of greater social mobility, to understand if it had an impact on what the incidence is, which so far has been increasing
The Assistant Secretary of State and Health said this Tuesday that the use of the mask, namely in schools, will be reassessed in the next two weeks and will take into account the transmissibility and mortality rate of covid-19.
“Right now we have indicators that may allow us to reanalyze this entire process in the next few days, eight or 15 days, and, if these indicators are maintained, they may alleviate these situations”, António Lacerda Sales told journalists, when asked about the Council’s position. National Health, which contested the maintenance of mask use in schools.
The Secretary of State, who did not speak importantly at the end of a ceremony that also marked the acquisition of INEM, supported that it is now the Easter period, which is a social mobility, and the Easter period to start classes.
“It is good that it can occur during the next few days to see if this one of greater social mobility had an impact, which so far in what is the demonstration of increasing”, stressed António Lada Sales, noting that Portugal currently has an indication of an increasing 577 cases. of infection per 100 million inhabitants in the last seven days and the transmissibility index is less than one.
According to the official, these indicators have not had an impact on general mortality.
“By means of good indicators and, we kept it next week, re-analyzing the next two weeks, re-analyzing the use of masks, and it can eventually be used for one or two weeks to proceed with ours during these, namely in schools”stressed.
António Lacerda Sales also revoked that “this decision is technically supported” and that “good decisions are always good technical decisions”.
On the day that education began in the third period of the school year, the National Council of Public Health became its position against maintaining the use of masks in schools, considering that SARS-CoV-2 infection among the community “does not has an objective dimension that justifies it”.
That body consults the teaching of the Governors schools by the epidemiologist Barros “is apprehensive about the insistence” on the use of the mask “in context”, considering that “this individual protection measure”, being of “proportional apprehension”, must “be restricted to other more specific contexts”, such as health services or homes, and “not to the school community, where affection does not have an objective dimension that justifies it”.
On Wednesday, the director-general of Health said that, despite the fact that covid-19 in children is “usually mild”, the end of the use of the mask in schools “is still a great risk with the transmissibility that still exists”.
“We cannot forget that children are vectors of disease transmission”, he added, explaining that this is where the widespread concern of covid-19 spreads in the community, as it can spread the disease to the population.