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The news is good. The peak of the second wave has been passed, the number of infections and hospitalized patients begins to fall, a sign that the measures adopted are working. At the end of Thursday’s meeting at Infarmed, the prime minister was the first to speak. And if he didn’t stop praising the good news, he didn’t ignore the warnings either. To do this, he resorted to the expression used by Manuel Carmo Gomes, Professor of Epidemiology at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, who hours before in the meeting when analyzing the number of countries with lower degrees of confinement, had left the warning: “This is a warning. As soon as we release spring, spring rises again. Costa took advantage.” It is necessary to maintain the pressure on spring, “he said, among other things because January and February will be months of risk.
“It was a long but very rich meeting on the epidemiological evolution in Portugal and Europe, and also on basic information about the vaccination process. It was clear that the measures adopted have been yielding results, but we cannot alleviate them yet. “said the prime minister. And he used the data collected in the North to reaffirm the point:” There is a clear indication that the peak of the second wave will have doubled and that the descending phase will have entered, both in terms of the number of new contagions and in terms of hospitalizations. “
However, the fight will last. Without wanting to advance any of the measures that will be implemented in the coming weeks – especially since he will only discuss them with dinner with Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and only on Saturday will the Council of Ministers join -, Costa recalled that the most agreed point among all the experts present at the meeting was even if “to maintain this downward trajectory it is necessary to maintain pressure on the spring”, the only way to “consolidate this process”. It should be remembered that, according to the Observer, freedom of movement between municipalities will be on the table on December 24 and 25.
On the horizon are Christmas and New Year’s Eve, two periods in which it will be impossible to avoid an increase in family and social contacts. Aware of this, in addition to the fact that the weather at the beginning of the year is also conducive to the spread of the virus, the objective is to maintain “the dynamics downward so that the Christmas season is reached with the situation duly controlled.” As for early 2021, there are no great illusions. “As everyone anticipates, necessarily at the beginning of January and February, we will have greater risks, either due to the temperature, or by Christmas, or by the confluence with other diseases, such as the flu,” he said.
With Portuguese
