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“At this moment the information is not the DGS (leader), strangely enough, nor is it only from the technical sector. (…) None of those present here are talking about how to fly a plane, but everyone knows how to deal with the pandemic “said Graça Freitas, in an interview with the Lusa agency.
The Director General acknowledges that at the beginning of the pandemic “it was easier” to communicate, since the General Directorate of Health (DGS) and the health sector “were the ones who knew the contingency plans and the measures to be taken and people were eager to hear and hear this information” .
“There is technical and institutional communication, which is transmitted mainly by DGS, INSA (National Institute of Health), Infarmed (National Institute of Medicines and Health Products). (…) Then we have political information, information from the media, from the people who have more time, who are journalists.
“Then we have their guests, experts and non-experts, all the people who have opinions, the deniers, the catastrophists, those from all sectors who have become opinion leaders,” he exemplifies. And we still have to rely on social media.
“So when it comes to communication, (…) It amazes me how it is said that it is the DGS that does not communicate well, because the DGS is only one of the elements of this interaction of messages that are multivariate ”.
“If we listen to the 24 hours of communication (…) it is a multiplicity of messages, some similar to others less similar, some say the same way, in others we do not all use the same words. I calculate that the normal citizen (.. .) on certain days it is actually shuffled, “he said. And remember that some opinions depend on the day in which other schemes are made and acquired outside of that context.
This opens a path to pandemic fatigue.
“There has been much talk about pandemic fatigue because it exists. We are not used to such long periods of collective crisis with this impact,” he warns. And in this case, it is “practically the entire planet, under enormous pressure.”
“(To combat pandemic fatigue) the first thing we have to give people It is a future perspective, sooner or later it will end, we do not know when. (…) We must hope that things improve. And people must have confidence in their health and social systems, ”he says.
“And then it is to think that it is in our hands, there is no other remedy, to counteract the virus. We cannot be all or nothing, oscillating between fear and total confinement and then waking up to find that there is no need to do anything.”, He argues, comparing to crossing a bridge, where we are in the middle of the bridge.
Regarding what DGS has been doing to communicate the pandemic, Graça Freitas considers some unfair criticisms and recalls that “they are not just press conferences”, speaking of campaigns, social networks, the web that falls with so many hits.
Regarding the various transmitters of communication about the pandemic -institutional, politicians, experts, the media and social networks- Graça Freitas says: “I have not yet seen one that has not had progress and setbacks, clearer days and less clear days . Why? Because we keep dealing with uncertainty At national and international level “.
The second patient with covid-19 is younger
Tracing the portrait of the covid-19 patient in the second wave of the pandemic in relation to the first, he said “the big difference” is the age profile, which is now between 20 and 50 years old.
Regarding the average length of hospital stay in nursing and intensive care, he said that “it is much lower because doctors have also learned to deal with this disease.”
“There is no specific therapy, but there are treatments that can be done and medications that can improve the prognosis and shorten the average stay,” said Graça Freitas, who is a specialist in public health.
The CEO warned that while most young people suffer from a mild illness, there is “an indirect effect” in the increase in the number of infected elderly, This will lead to “a greater occupation of health services, public, private, social” and “greater pressure,” he warned.
Social support teams
Graça Freitas gave the example of what happened in Lisbon, in which there were a high number of cases “in very socially weak peripheral populations.” There were teams that made home visits to these people and local financing lines to provide them with economic, housing, food and assistance support so that they could stay at home or in a back house.
The creation of these teams is expanding in the north of the country: “The same mechanisms are being created because we have to give our fellow citizens less good from an economic point of view, with job insecurity and fear of not being able to survive 15 days. at least isolation or illness, conditions for them to do their duty, ”he said.
Patients with financial problems should stay home and ask for help.
The Director General of Health appealed to the suspects or patients with covid-19 who, due to economic difficulties, continue to work or take their children to school to stay at home and ask for help, because there are mechanisms to support them.
“We should not, out of extreme economic necessity, go to work sick or send a sick child to school, because we are not only aggravating the state of the disease, because we are not at rest, nor being treated or accompanied, as we are being agents disease spreaders ”, Graça Freitas warned, in an interview with the Lusa agency.
The Director General of Health called on people to “stay home and get in touch with the public health team or the Linha Saúde 24, so that someone can help them, and even mention that they have needs.”
“We can only reach out and help those we know need help,” he said.
Therefore, he reinforced: “Do not go to work, do not go to school, but do the self-signaling. Tell the public health doctor, the family doctor, the Social Security, the local authority that you need help, that you will certainly have”.
To deal with these situations, mechanisms have been created so that sick people have their medical certificate and so that people who are at home in prophylactic isolation have a provisional declaration of disability that prevents them from losing their labor rights, that is, expiration date, explained Graça Freitas.
“Now I know that many times we are talking about workers without any kind of link, who are precarious, who have a difficult life,” but for these workers mechanisms were created at the municipal level..
Analysis of mortality and causes will not be completed until 2021
The health authority will only have completed in 2021 the analysis of the increase in the number of deaths and their causes during the period of the pandemic, since it is a complex process to analyze, revealed the Director General of Health.
Graça Freitas explained that, in fact, there are overmortality this year, but says values ”should be carefully studied“and that the process” is much more complex than you think. “
“In a few months we will know. First we will have to cover a wide spectrum in the number of causes … it is useless to observe just one month, since there may be atypical phenomena (…). a year, “he said.
The latest data published by the INE indicates that, from the arrival of the pandemic to Portugal (early March) until October 18, 72,519 people died, 7,396 more deaths than the average for the same period in the previous five years, Covid-19 being responsible for 2,198 deaths, that is, 27.5% of the total increase in mortality.
Graça Freitas recognizes this increase in the number of deaths this year, but it emphasizes that mortality has two dimensions, the numerical one and the causes of death, and adds that the General Directorate of Health (DGS) is “making these preliminary analyzes.”
“These are very preliminary assessments, very poorly consolidated and we do not feel comfortable disclosing them. They are just clues, indications for us to deepen our knowledge,” he added.
“It is a sophisticated and complex process. At the moment we only have clues and indications that lead us to delve into certain aspects. We will only know exactly what happened in 2020 in a few months, when the entire year 2020 has been studied in terms of causes of death. Different things are the numbers and the average. “
c / The day after tomorrow
