Portugal registered more than 58,000 new cases of infection in the last month, a period in which admissions to intensive care increased by 122%, but with the number of deaths having only increased by 0.8%.
On June 14th, the country had 858,072 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection. The most recent data from the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) indicates that Wednesday (yesterday), the eve of today's Council of Ministers assessment of the pandemic, 916,559 cases had already been reported, representing an increase of 6.8% in the space of one month.
By regions, Lisbon and Vale do Tejo were where the most infections were seen in the last month, with almost 32 thousand, but it was the Algarve that registered the highest percentage increase in cases of Covid-19, with 24% , from 22,653 to 28,205.
Active cases increased by 85%
With regard to active cases in the country, they increased from 25,403 to the current 47,108, which represents a growth of 85%.
Despite being very far from the figures from the beginning of the year, the evolution of the pandemic in the last month is also reflected in the pressure on the National Health Service, with an increase of 115% in admissions (from 340 to 14th June to 734 to 14th July) and 122% in intensive care (from 77 to 171 on Wednesday).
The “red lines” of pandemic control established by several experts predict 245 beds in intensive care as the critical value for mainland Portugal, pointing to a regional distribution of 85 beds in the North, 56 in the Center, 84 in Lisbon and Vale do Tagus, 10 in Alentejo and 10 in Algarve.
Taking into account the 171 patients who were in intensive care on Wednesday, mainland Portugal reached 69.7% of the 245 bed threshold defined as critical, when, on June 16th, this value was at 36%, which represented 88 in intensive care units.
Number of deaths registered a slight increase
Despite this greater pressure on the National Health Service, the number of deaths registered only a slight increase of 0.8%, with 135 more deaths in the period under review making a total of 17,182 since the beginning of the pandemic in Portugal.
The negative evolution of the pandemic in the last month is also evident in the indicators that make up the risk matrix, which changed from the orange to the red quadrant, with the incidence rate of new cases of infection increasing from 83.4 to 346.5 in mainland territory in about thirty days.
The transmissibility index - which estimates the number of secondary cases of infection resulting from a person with the virus - went from 1.10 to 1.15 on the continent, above the established limit of 1.
The pace of vaccine administration has also accelerated in the last month, from 42% to 60% of the population with the first dose (from about 4.3 million to 6.2 million people), while the number of users who completed the vaccination rose from 25% to 42% (from about 2.5 million to 4.3 million).
People between 50 and 64 years old and between 25 and 49 years old were the age groups with the most significant growth in inoculations since June 13th, going from 69% to 90% and from 19% to 57% with the first dose, respectively.
Original article available in Portuguese at http://postal.pt/
