The number of cases of high infection.

  • António Lacerda Sales, Undersecretary of State and Health, began the press conference with the explanation of the increase in the number of contagion cases, justified by the delay in reporting a laboratory in the North, which has not been able to communicate values ​​since the past 30. October.
  • “The data in the bulletin are the result of the notification from the SINAVE system (National Epidemiological Surveillance System). We depend on both the notification of laboratories and medical assistants so that the daily photograph is as close to reality. the last 24 hours, since a laboratory in the north has not been able to make the notifications since the 30th, having accumulated the figure yesterday in a sum of more than 3,500 cases. Despite the image of the report, these cases were naturally followed at the clinical level, either by public health teams. The importance of the complaint is fundamental and the Ministry of Health is taking measures to prevent these situations from occurring ”, justified the government official.
  • “It is our responsibility to assume the error of numbers with the same veracity and transparency as always. With the increase in the incidence of Covid-19, the Ministry of Health issued an order to ensure the best coordination of response to needs. This means that The less pressured hospitals may have to respond to the patients of the most pressured hospitals, as, by the way, is already happening, ”he said.
  • The Assistant Secretary of State and Health also said there are 7,497 more active cases, 5% more than Tuesday, with 96.4% of patients recovering at home and 3.6% in the hospital. Of these, 0.5% are hospitalized in intensive care units and 3.1% in wards.

Good news

  • The Deputy Secretary of State and Health stressed that it is important to give “the good news”, despite everything. “It has to do with the value of R [indicador de transmissão da covid] which has been systematically decreasing since October 14, 15 ”, he emphasized.
  • The official recalled that on October 10 the R was 1.27 and today it is 1.14. In the North, the region most harassed, it was 1.4 and today it is 1.13. According to this information, Lacerda Sales said that, “apparently, there is a slowdown of the pandemic itself.”

SNS24 Line issues isolation absences statements starting today

  • The president of the Shared Services of the Ministry of Health (SPMS), Luís Goes Pinheiro, has explained that the measure comes into force “at the end of today”, after having been approved by the extraordinary council of ministers held on Saturday and published on Tuesday . in Diário da República.
  • The statement allows you to “justify the absence from the workplace [bem como a apresentação presencial a outras entidades] and the obligation to stay at home ”. The official clarified that the statement is issued by Line SNS24 in cases where “a certain person is identified as a high-risk contact or may present symptoms”, without the need to go to a service to do so.
  • The provisional declaration of isolation will only justify the cases of absences from work by means of a supplementary declaration from the employer in cases where “the exercise of professional activity in telework is impossible”.
  • On Saturday, the President of the Government, António Costa, justified this measure with the need to “expedite what has been the relationship of many Linha Saúde 24 users with obtaining statements to justify the absences to the employer and obtaining payment of part of social security “.

One third of Portugal’s population has already been screened

  • About a third of the population in Portugal has already been tested for the new coronavirus, the Secretary of State and Deputy Health Secretary revealed today, stating that testing capacity has been strengthened by more than 300% since March.
  • António Lacerda Sales indicated that more than 3.4 million people had already been tested, which is equivalent to about a third of the population. By millions of inhabitants, Portugal is performing an average of more than 280 thousand tests, recording days with more than 30 thousand analyzes.
  • “We have more than 300% of the testing capacity that we had in March, which I think is a substantial boost,” added the secretary of state.

Testing done on weekends

  • Asked specifically about the tests carried out over the weekend and whether the usually lower number of new cases registered in epidemiological bulletins is explained on Mondays and Tuesdays, the official said that the problem is the notifications and not the tests.
  • “The problem is the reporting and notifications of these tests. Just to get an idea of ​​the dimension, 52,947 tests were run on Saturday and Sunday. A decrease in test performance is not guaranteed, but it is the administrative difficulty, ”he said.

Test problems in the north

  • The undersecretary of State and Health said Wednesday that he has no information that there are problems.
  • “The North has a high capacity for proof. The result of this is the number of cases that exist [na região]. I am not aware of technical problems at this time, but I am sure that I will be better informed and if this happens I will communicate it at the next opportunity ”, he said.

Active outbreaks in households on the continent

  • There are 134 outbreaks in homes, of which 130 are in residential structures for the elderly and four in integrated intensive care units.

Peak forecast

  • Questioned by the forecast of the peak of the second wave in Portugal, António Lacerda Sales explained that this is something difficult to predict.
  • “It is never possible to predict the peak before the two-week turning point and before we start to go down. It depends a lot on the effectiveness of the implemented measures and we still do not know what the real effectiveness of these implemented measures will be ”, he emphasized.