[ad_1]
The Order of Physicians (OM) defended this Friday the change in vaccination criteria against covid-19, favoring the age factor, to facilitate the identification of the target groups and to reduce mortality, morbidity and pressure on services.
Corroborating that doctors and other health professionals “should be considered a priority”, the OM defended, along with the guardianship, “a change in the operational criteria of population groups with known risk factors, favoring, for example, the age factor, which would facilitate the identification of the target groups and would reduce mortality, morbidity and pressure on the services “.
To justify this condemnation, the order led by Miguel Guimarães emphasizes that “the fatality rate varies from around 0.3% in the group aged 50 to 59 years to 13.6% in the group of 80.”
In this sense, professionals and residents of nursing homes, long-term care units and those elderly who are followed directly by families, would benefit from the vaccine in the first stage. Likewise, with regard to health professionals, we defend that the factor of age and associated diseases should be considered in the initial selection, regardless of the health unit, region of the country or sector in which they carry out their activity ” , he argues.
In a letter addressed to Marta Temido’s ministry, the OM also expressed “concern about the lack of operational criteria for health professionals who do not work in the SNS. [Serviço nacional de Saúde] and for citizens who are followed exclusively at the hospital level in the SNS and those who are followed only in the social and private sectors ”.
The OM’s position appears in the “sequence of some news items that show that it fully corroborated Portugal’s strategy to start vaccination against covid-19 by health professionals.”
For this reason, he intends to “clarify that he sent to the Ministry of Health, on December 21, a letter with comments on the National Covid-19 Vaccination Plan to which he had access, and that this is the same plan announced by the coordinator of the working group with Social communication “.
In that document, the press release continues, “the president of the Medical College and the Covid-19 Crisis Office argued that it was urgent to define in a clear, coherent and attractive way a vaccination strategy based above all on the prevention objectives of mortality and prevent the overload of health services, following the criteria of reduction of morbidity, mortality and preservation of non-covert healthcare activity ”.
The Regional Covid-19 Vaccination Plan establishes three phases, starting with the elderly population and health professionals, public and private, followed by people with comorbidities and then the rest of the population.
The estimate indicates that 50 thousand people will be vaccinated in the first phase; another 50 thousand in the second phase and, finally, 100 thousand people.
The vaccination campaign began on Sunday in Portugal, as in other countries of the European Union.
The vaccine is optional, free and universal, and is provided by the NHS.
[ad_2]
