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Vice Admiral Gouveia e Melo, coordinator of the covid-19 vaccination working group, today anticipated a possible increase in the rate of inoculations to 100,000 per day and stressed that group immunity can be achieved in August.
“There is a more positive expectation for the second quarter and much more positive for the third and fourth quarters. If these expectations of vaccine availability continue and materialize in the near future, the period in which group immunity can be achieved (70%) may eventually be reduced from late summer to mid-summer, around mid to early August. “, He said. .
In the speech delivered at the meeting that brings together epidemiologists and public health specialists and the political class at the Infarmed headquarters in Lisbon, the Vice Admiral, who replaced Francisco Ramos at the head of the ‘working group’ earlier this month, it also reinforced the need. to resort to other means of administration of vaccines in addition to health centers, something that he had previously defended, such as the possible extension of the process to pharmacies.
“There will be a concentration of vaccines already in the second trimester enough to increase the speed of vaccination to around 100,000 vaccines per day, which will make it necessary to think of alternative models to health centers in primary care so that this vaccination process can be run smoothly on vaccines, ”he guaranteed.
Gouveia e Melo went further and reiterated that with the disappearance of the vaccine availability bottleneck in this first phase, “the administration of the vaccine must be robust and capable enough to keep up” with the recommended rate of 100,000 daily inoculations in the country for the second and third phase.
The person in charge of the process said that the country has already received almost one million vaccines against covid-19 since the end of December and that around 680 thousand have already been administered, and 230 thousand more inoculations are expected this week.
“It shows a very high performance. We already have seven for every 100 inhabitants with at least one inoculation; 4.5% of the population with the first dose and 2.7% with the second dose. The vaccination plan is going well, given the availability, ”he said.
In Portugal, 16,023 people died from 798,074 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
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