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To the criticism left by the current and the five former presidents of Doctors who sent an open letter to defend that it is urgent to change the strategy of the National Health Service, the minister responded, guaranteeing that “there is already collaboration with the private and social ”. If it is necessary to hire individuals, “the State will do it,” he emphasized, returning a question: “Why are they pushing us?”
The epidemic in Portugal “does not shoot up,” the Health Minister said this afternoon, “it is growing.” In an interview with TVI, Marta Temido considered that the country is “in a new stage of growth”, which she justified with the relief of restrictive measures.
“In March and April we applied a restriction on contagion and while the measure lasted, the transmission was controlled,” said the minister, who has identified, so far, “three phases” in the evolution of the new coronavirus. What kind of growth we will see now “we will only know shortly,” he concluded.
Marta Temido, who insisted that a scenario of total confinement “is something that all governments will do to avoid”, did not exclude “more serious sectorial measures”, but ruled out the possibility of ‘traffic light’ systems, such as those adopted in Europe.
“Our strategy has been to involve the population” in “proximity work with schools, civil protection services, municipalities and Social Security,” he said, since measures such as the traffic light system have a very high risk of stigmatization. ”.
Regarding the current risk of transmissibility, Marta Temido stated that it varies between 0.91 in the Algarve region and 1.2 in the northern region, according to data obtained for the period from October 5 to 10. He added that the SNS has 511 beds in intensive care units, “multipurpose adults”, with the current occupation at 68%.
