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The use of a mask will also be mandatory in outdoor spaces. This will be the case, at least in some cases, as the Director General of Health explained this Monday: “Very soon, after having consulted national and international experts, there will be an orientation for people to wear masks when they are abroad without being able to guarantee the recommended physical distance for them or for others ”, said Graça Freitas during the press conference to update the epidemiological evolution in Portugal.
“The use of masks will make sense if we go to areas where we cannot guarantee that we are far from each other”, contextualized Graça Freitas, clarifying that “different is a situation outdoors in the field, in a garden or at times when others do not walk people walking ”.
Regarding the start of the new academic year, Graça Freitas considers that, “with such a high number of schools and students, the first week passed quite well”, in a “relatively quiet” environment. He acknowledges that “adjustments must be made”, because “ways were found to improve some procedures in the schools”, where “some cases were identified, but from the point of view of public health none of these cases would lead to closure” .
Asked about the fact that the number of recovered cases of covid-19 decreased between July and mid-September (having recovered only slightly in the last week), the Director General of Health stressed that “priority is being given to treating new cases and less register the recovered ”. However, Graça Freitas has stressed that, in the coming days, an effort will be made to update these numbers, bringing them closer to the real value, which will be higher.
Also present at the press conference, the Undersecretary of State and Health, António Lacerda Sales, dismissed a possible scenario of partial confinement, similar to the one applied in Madrid. “Today we know more about the disease, we are better prepared and general or partial confinement is a public health response that we certainly do not want to unleash again,” said the minister.
Regarding the possibility of the Government accepting the Red Cross proposal for the use of rapid tests, news advanced by Expresso on Saturday, the Secretary of State said that these antigen tests, which allow results between 10 and 30 minutes, “can to be an added value in a context of scarce resources, epidemiological evolution and in certain specific situations, such as outbreaks ”.
Lacerda Sales admitted that “several countries are carrying out an analysis of this type of test, including Portugal”, but points out that “there is still some uncertainty and uncertainty about its current use”. Why? “They have less sensitivity than conventional tests, especially when the viral load in patients is low”, which means that “asymptomatic people with viral load can be negative with this type of test,” explained the Secretary of State, to who this method “should not be a sole criterion in the evaluation”.
