On the 71st day after the 100th reported case, Portugal maintains a controlled path in the rhythm of registered cases. The United States already has 1.6 million cases (24 thousand were reported in the last day) but they are also slowing the rate of spread – as well as most countries that registered 100 cases as long or longer than Portugal. Exceptions to this downward trend are Bahrain and Qatar.
Portugal and Qatar reported the 100th case exactly 71 days ago but followed different trajectories: Portugal flattened the curve, Qatar did not – the daily variation is over 4.7%. On May 16, we had the same number of cases, but within a week, Qatar had a difference for Portugal of more than 10,000 cases. Qatar has 2.8 million inhabitants, close to 1/4 of the resident population in Portugal. Within the countries most affected by the outbreak, it is even the first in number of cases per inhabitant.
For the 15th consecutive day Portugal returned to a daily variation of cases below 1%, today it was at the limit, but still below the mark: 0.9%. It is at this stage that the lines start to have a flatter design and there are many examples that already have it: South Korea, a country that even started with a very high number of cases but that ended up controlling the outbreak effectively, Austria, Iceland or Greece. Others, with numbers higher than the Portuguese, such as China, Spain or Italy, also have the curves in this situation. Even so, the evolution of the number of infected with covid-19 in Portugal is notably lower than the evolution seen in countries with a more serious situation, such as China, Italy, Spain or Iran.
Let’s go to the absolute numbers: Portugal had 271 new cases today, 17 less than yesterday. The relationship between this indicator and the daily variation allows us to assess whether the day was more positive or more negative with regard only to the number of infected people, again, in the same phase of the outbreak. When we compare ourselves with other countries for as long or longer than we do with more than 100 cases we see 8 with more optimistic indicators, including France and the Netherlands, – marked in the graph in yellow – and 9 with more negative results – marked in blue. Qatar, Singapore and Bahrain had a higher daily variation, which ends up marking the upward trend in the evolution of cases in these countries.
As for the line that records deaths, a tendency towards slowdown in the growth rate of the Portuguese curve, which maintains a comfortable distance from the lines that compare the outbreak in other countries. Germany, Sweden, the United States and Canada are some of the countries that had a more positive situation than Portugal at the beginning of the outbreak but were unable to control the numbers in the same way.
In the accumulated values, at the point where we are, 63 days after the 10th death, the 1302 accumulated deaths in Portugal place us between China and Indonesia. In fact, the route of the Portuguese line in recent days is not very different from that of the Indonesia line; Portugal still has a slightly higher cumulative number, but with lower growth, which gradually brings the two lines closer together.
But are we past the worst moment? If you look at the graph below, where instead of analyzing the accumulated numbers we average the values of the last seven days (which mitigates the effects of days with abnormal peaks, whether high or low), we realize that the decreasing trend in the number of cases was broken even before the deflation. There followed days of alternating between more positive and less positive numbers that led us to a new ‘plateau’. At the lowest point, just over a week ago, the average value of new daily cases was 188. Currently it is 237, that is, on average, there are 49 more new cases per day.
What about the lack of definition in other European countries? Germany, Belgium, Spain, Denmark Italy and the United Kingdom, all of them with numbers higher than ours, show that until now, the lack of definition has not negatively affected the decreasing trend of new cases. The Netherlands reduced, in just over two weeks, the average number of new cases from 382 to 172 (-209). Safeguarding due differences in numbers, France and Portugal have a very similar design between the two lines but, in recent weeks, France has managed to maintain a consistent decline.
Sweden has been on a long ‘plateau’ for about 43 days between 500 and 600 new cases a day. Austria and the Czech Republic show an inversion in the downward trend: as in Portugal, the average value of new cases per day has risen in the past few days. These two countries have lower values than the Portuguese: Austria, at the lowest point, had 35 new cases on average and now has 42 (+7) and the Czech Republic rose from 42 to 58 (+16).
Russia is the big one ‘outlier‘in this group of countries: it did not consolidate a downward trend but it seems to have stabilized new cases at values below 10,000 cases per day.
The 13 deaths recorded today are not able to mitigate the trend of gradual growth in the average number of the last 7 days. Here, too, Portugal seems to be in a countercyclical trend with the rest of Europe, but with significantly lower numbers, some consideration is needed in the conclusions. Even so, in a more global way, the Portuguese line has had a more stable record than the new cases line. At the end of April the average value of deaths was 27, currently it is 14, a figure comparable to those recorded at the end of March. Switzerland, which in total has more deaths than Portugal, already has an average number of new deaths lower than ours.
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