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The news of the day is also “good news” for Portugal. After the CEO of the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which is developing a vaccine for Covid-19 with the Germans at BioNTech, announced that the most recent test results show a high rate of effectiveness of the vaccine, Graça Freitas. He applauded the achievement and stated that this is one of the study vaccines that Portugal is expected to acquire.
Speaking at the usual DGS press conference, the Director General of Health said that if Pfizer’s vaccine has the announced level of effectiveness, around 90%, it will be “one of the best vaccines we will have” and that, therefore, “This is good news.” This vaccine “is one of those that the country plans to acquire,” Graça Freitas underlined.
Pfizer’s vaccine is 90% effective. “Today is a great day for science and humanity,” announced the CEO of the company.
On the day that the daily pandemic bulletin reports another maximum in the number of deaths, Graça Freitas also warned at the press conference that people should not go for tests, whether rapid or otherwise, without medical advice, appealing. “self-discipline”.
“People should not take the initiative to ask for tests themselves, they should wait for a medical request, medical advice,” he said in a way “to appeal to the population.” “It is not advisable to do tests, whatever they are, without a prescription,” said the DGS general director. “It was good for us to discipline ourselves and wait for a medical prescription to do the test,” he insisted, highlighting the importance of maintaining the strategy of vigilance and action.
Graça Freitas also admitted the reliability of the epidemiological data collected, since they are not filled out automatically but manually, with various parameters. As for the list of at-risk counties – which have more than 240 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days – it will be updated in the coming days, he said, warning the population not to go to these 121 counties, although it is not prohibited. movement between municipalities.
The director general of DGS recalled that a new definition of “case” of infection came into force. Therefore, a possible case of Covid is now considered if the patient presents as symptoms the following indicators: “cough, which reappears or worsens or deviates from the usual pattern”; “Fever, body temperature equal to or greater than 38 degrees centigrade, with no other attributable cause”; “Shortness of breath, shortness of breath, also without other attributable cause”; “Loss of smell” and “loss of taste, distortion of taste.”
These people reinforce the clinical suspicion if they have been in direct and close contact in the last 14 days with someone who is sick or if they are part of an outbreak, for example, in a home, in a school, even in a family context ”, explained Graça Freitas at the conference. about the pandemic.
