Portugal acquired 35,000 doses of antivirals for covid-19
Tuesday’s director-general, Graça Freitas, said this Tuesday that Portugal acquired 35,000 doses of antivirals for covid-19 and that contracts with pharmaceutical health allow the replacement of the corresponding stocks.
“35,000 doses of antivirals were acquired in a regime that allows us to monitor stocks and, as these stocks are running out, we obviously have contracts with companies made in order to replace them”, Graça Freitas at the Health Commission said was heard on maternal and all-cause mortality at the request of BE and PSD.
According to the director-general of Health, the norm with the oriented lines of treatment with antiviral drugs against covid-19 for the stages of the disease (mild, moderate and severe) “is special”, since it several times leaves to the clinical criteria to be determined from the strategic reserve.
“If clinicians so decide, they can activate a reserve, through hospital pharmacies”, said Graça Freitas, explaining that some hospitals have set up their own reserves to make hospitals available “more quickly”.
“There are other hospitals that prefer to make the request to the ARS, but this is a matter of governance of health institutions”, said the director general of Health.
Graça Freitas responded to the deputy of the Liberal Initiative Joana Cordeiro, who questioned whether these antivirals were administered to the entire eligible population and why the “DGS imports such a large restriction on access to these medicines”, guiding the examples of Spain and the United Kingdom, where they are available in community pharmacies.
On July 11, the National Medicines Authority (Infarmed) said that the country had 9,975 units of the oral antiviral drug Paxlovid in stock, out of a total of 30,000 treatments acquired per year, of which 10,000 units had already been purchased for this national territory. As for the antiviral Lagevrio, the stock is 2,159 units, with 5,000 treatments of this drug having been purchased for 2022, 2,160 of which have already arrived in Portugal.