It was not exactly a surprise, although it was unpleasant news. Jorge Buescu, with a degree in Physics and a PhD in Mathematics, had already commented to his closest family that the first death of a Covid-19 patient in Portugal should happen Sunday or Monday. Not because it has a mathematical model that would indicate it, but because of statistical approximation to other countries. So it was. THE first deadly victim was announced this Monday by the Minister of Health – an 80-year-old man, admitted to the Santa Maria Hospital, in Lisbon, for several days. Immediately, he believes that the death curve in Portugal will follow the Spanish curve. The problem will be when the National Health Service reaches the break.

This Monday, Portugal was the European country, among those with more than 200 infected, that registered the highest rise in positive cases in 24 hours, a 35% rise – an increase, even so, slightly below that recorded in previous days in percentage terms.

“There is nothing particularly scientific here. I don’t really have a mathematical model that would allow me to say when we were going to see the first death. It is a mere statistical correlation, after comparing our curve with that of Italy, Spain, Germany ”, he explains. “I saw in the respective data how many infected countries in these countries had at the time of the first death and I realized that we were going to go there during this weekend.”

In Portugal, 14 days passed between the first positive case of infection with the new coronavirus. The first death occurred on the date that there were a total of 331 infected (3 already cured). On Sunday it was 245, on Saturday 169.

In Spain, 8 days passed between the first infection and the first death (which happened when there were 162 patients from Covid-19). In Italy, the second country most affected by the pandemic, 21 days separate the first known case from the first announced death. On that day, 21 people were infected and there was nothing to predict that evolution would take on current proportions. In France, too, there are 21 days that separate the first known case from the first death (first death in Europe). At that time, the French counted only 12 cases of contagion.

UK? 34 days. The first death occurs when those infected reach 116.

Germany deviates from any standard. The first death occurs when there are already 1,224 infected, 42 days after the first positive case is detected.

The former professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico, current at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, has been making predictions about the evolution of the number of infected for 14 days. The accounts you have made place the infected numbers in Portugal between 16,300 and 48,000 at the end of March, but, as he himself assumes in an article published in the Observer, his estimates have proved to be conservative and wrong by default.

“It is one thing to predict the number of infected people, which has to do with the form of spread. Another thing is to talk about deaths that have to do with many other variables and that, above all, has a lot to do with medical means that each country has at its disposal ”, recalls the former president of the Portuguese Mathematical Society. “We are the country with the least means at its disposal. Germany has nine times as many beds per capita than us, and three times more than Italy. ”

The example of Italy serves to illustrate this detail. Before the rupture of the health service, the mortality rate was 2%, after all it failed, it rose to 6% and Italian doctors are forced to choose who they can save as the means are not enough for everyone.

“It is looking at other European countries to see what will happen. We can’t wait any better. We may have euphemisms, but sooner or later, the country will reach the breaking point – which is when we have more patients than beds – as happened with Italy. Only Germany is left out, it is a separate case because it has many more means and, despite the number of cases, it is managing to contain critical cases ”, stresses Jorge Buescu. “We will follow Spain, but we will probably reach the breaking point sooner.”

And that means more deaths, like Graça Freitas, general director of Health, took over this Monday at the press conference at which the Minister of Health announced the first death toll among Covid-19 patients. “We will see how the outcome will be, we all know that the mortality rate of this disease is over 2% worldwide. Therefore, in the coming days we will have more people to die. It is part of the history of the disease. ”

For Monday, Jorge Buescu had not yet compared the curves with the number of infected by SARS-CoV-19, but on Sunday the Portuguese evolution was the same as that of Spain, it was well below that of France, and far below that of France. Germany and Italy.

Portugal was the European country with more than 200 cases that registered the biggest increase in the number of new infected in 24 hours, according to the most recent data from Worldmeter, a website that permanently updates national statistics on the evolution of the new coronavirus.

Among the 18 European countries that have already identified more than 200 infected patients, Portugal registered a rise of 35% in 24 hours (until 00:00 on Monday), which corresponds to another 86 infected, bringing the total to 331. It is the largest daily increase in percentage terms seen in these 18 countries.

In Germany and Holland, there was an increase of 25% in the number of infected, while in France there was an additional 22% of cases. Estonia, Belgium and Spain saw the numbers rise to around 18%. In Italy, new cases registered grew by 13%. Despite having more infections than Portugal, countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Denmark, in the last 24 hours with registration, saw the number of infected people grow below 10%. On the other hand, and in these 18 countries, which includes Switzerland (which is one of the most cases), there are four that have not yet reported deaths.

These differences reflect the degree of development of the outbreak in each country. Portugal was not among the first to register positive cases, but health authorities had already warned that the number would rise significantly in the coming weeks. But there will be other factors. It is necessary to assess whether, in the coming days, Portugal maintains a superior record of new daily infections in relation to other countries, especially those that are in a comparable degree of evolution of the outbreak.

And is there still a solution with such a scenario? “The only possible thing to do is an emergency health budget, buy fans from China, and put military planes to fetch them. I’m not kidding. Our window of opportunity is very short ”, concludes Jorge Buescu.