For Paulo Santos, family doctor, specialist in clinical research and one of the authors of the Metis project, a platform for the Center for Research in Health Technologies and Services (CINTESIS) and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP), he recognizes that the numbers make you “worried”. The comparisons with Europe made by this project (which aims to deconstruct the scientific language to be accessible to the general public) had already given the alarm signal a few weeks ago, by revealing that Portugal was on a diverging route in the face of the trend of drop in most of its European peers.
The data from the last five days, collected by the Observer, indicate that Portugal is almost the only country in the European Union (the other was Luxembourg) that has been increasing the number of new cases per 100 thousand inhabitants.
Sweden, the other country that, like Portugal, is persona non grata in European Union countries with a more controlled epidemic, it continues to have a higher ratio than Portugal. However, the number of new weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants recorded from 15 to 21 June in Sweden decreased by 27.1% in relation to the proportion calculated in the previous week, reveal data from Our World in Data. In Portugal it increased 9.5%, according to the same source. In fact, since May, “all the rest of Europe was on a downward trend except for us and Sweden,” notes Paulo Santos.
But, unlike Portugal, Sweden has taken a different approach since the beginning of the pandemic than most countries with a regime less restrictive to the mobility of citizens and the activities allowed even during the peak. For example, restaurants never closed.
This evolution of the pandemic, a trend that is visible in the weekly statistics, is making experts apprehensive and may also explain the outburst of the prime minister at the Infarmed meeting, who did not like that Marta Temido, the Minister of Health, used the term “confinement” referring to the period of isolation experienced by the Portuguese during the state of emergency.
However, we are not the only country in this situation. There were seven other countries that saw the number of new cases per 100 thousand inhabitants increase from the week of 8 to 14 June to the following, all of them with rates higher than the Portuguese: Romania (+ 57.1%), Bulgaria (12.5 %), Luxembourg (+ 75%), Germany (+ 33.3%), Slovenia (285.7%), Slovakia (141.2%) and Croatia (1100%).
The difference is that citizens of any of these countries would still be able to enter Denmark (which imposed a maximum of 20 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants per week), Latvia or Lithuania (25 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants), for example, while Portugal would remain outside, as they have more stable and controlled staff.
As for Finland, with tighter rules and turning its back on those who have at least eight new weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants, it now stops Romania and Bulgaria, but opens the door to Poland and the Netherlands. Portugal remains far from the numbers demanded by the Finns.
These countries are reviewing the criteria used to allow or prohibit residents from entering other countries – Denmark this Saturday, the United Kingdom next Monday. Paulo Santos considers that the criterion of 20 new daily cases per 100 thousand inhabitants that was used for example by Denmark to justify restrictions on the entry of people from Portugal “has no scientific basis” and is above all “political”.
For the expert, it will have been used as a limit because most countries were already below this growth value. In fact, according to the latest figures, countries “could even adopt more restrictive criteria”, since most of them are registering 10 fewer new cases per day per 100,000 inhabitants, he says.
Portugal has been a heterogeneous country in the way that Covid-19 has attacked the national territory. The epidemic broke out in the North in March and from there spread mainly to Lisbon and the Tagus Valley (the areas with the highest population density in mainland Portugal), saving more in the Center, the South and the Alentejo, which registered fewer daily cases and ratios. less alarming.
But official data from the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) prove that the tide has already turned. The overwhelming majority of new daily cases of Covid-19 in Portugal are from Lisbon and the Tagus Valley, which saw the numbers rise steadily since May 3 – when the country ceased to be in a state of emergency and moved to the state of calamity, and just one day before the beginning of the first phase of deflation – and that surpassed the numbers of the North on Wednesday.
That is what the calculations of the new weekly cases of Covid-19 per 100 thousand inhabitants testify from May 4th to June 21st. In the first week of Portuguese deflation, Lisbon and the Tagus Valley registered a ratio of 33 new cases per 100 thousand inhabitants while the North had 25. The latter region saw the proportion of new cases as a result of the population decreasing until the last week of May ( two cases per 100 thousand inhabitants) to then increase, but only slightly, in the following weeks.
But Lisbon and the Tagus Valley, on the other hand, had no rest. From the first to the second week of May, during the first phase of deflation, the ratio of new weekly cases of Covid-19 per 100 thousand inhabitants decreased from 33 between 4 and 10 May to 27 between 11 and 17 May – the value lowest since the time of deflation. From then on, the numbers soared: in the week of 15 to 21 June, the ratio was 53 new weekly cases of Covid-19 per 100 thousand inhabitants. It is an increase of 96.2% in relation to the lowest values since the country started to return to normal life.
–
