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The internist António Ferreira, from the São João Hospital, considered this Monday that the measures to combat covid-19 that stop social and economic activity, such as confinement and curfew, “are useless and harmful.”
In his speech at the “71 minutes for health” conference, organized by the National Health Convention, António Ferreira began by stating that he is not a denier.
“I know that the Covid-19 pandemic is a very serious public health problem and also a social one. I strongly defend non-pharmacological prevention measures, based on social distance, hand hygiene and the use of a mask and do not subscribe to the positions of some countries and some researchers and epidemiologists who defend that the virus is allowed to circulate to create immunity of group, “said the expert.
He also said he disagreed “radically with the attitudes and strategy that is being followed to combat the pandemic in most industrialized countries and also in Portugal”, but which is strictly adhered to.
For António Ferreira, from the Porto Faculty of Medicine, “confining more, confining less, not confining, has no effect on what matters, which is mortality.”
“Extremist and sanitary measures, not other preventive measures, are harmful, have a serious social and economic impact, lead to social misery, induce an increase in social conflict,” he said.
In his opinion, these measures and “the obsessive centralization in the disorganized and useless response” that is being implemented to covid, also have “serious consequences” in the provision of health care to non-covid-19 patients and this translates into excess mortality .
Official data from the National Institute of Statistics recently published show an increase in mortality of around 8%, eight thousand deaths more than the average of previous years. The mortality attributed to the covid explains 27% of these deaths, that is, almost 5,740 deaths have no explanation.
In Portugal, the INE shows that hospital mortality increased by 6% this year compared to the last five years, almost all this mortality is explained by deaths from covid, but mortality outside the hospital, at home, increased by 23 %.
“It is easy to see that chronic patients with acute situations, that patients with acute illnesses are not being treated and die at home,” the intensivist warned.
In his opinion, “the closure” of primary care, which is the gateway to the SNS, will prevent new cases of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and neoplasms from being diagnosed, treated on time and will condition the increase in mortality in 2021, 2022.
“This closure of health care does not make sense, especially now that the number of cases had long exceeded the response capacity of our colleagues in General and Family Medicine focused solely on registering and monitoring covid cases that do not have time to help other patients ”, he emphasized.
According to the doctor, there are ‘clusters’ of positive patients who, after a week, have not yet been contacted by the health authorities, which does not allow any preventive intervention.
He added that the response from hospital institutions was not prepared and said that he did not understand why rapid tests are not widely used to “diagnose and screen all people who have symptomatic and asymptomatic viral infection so that they can intervene with them and get out of the hospital. hospital”. the vast majority of the population works to produce and society works.
“If we can do it, it is much more effective than any selective curfew at certain times of the weekend, after night,” he defended.
Faced with this situation, António Ferreira considered that “the cure is worse than the disease, it does more damage.”
Fortunately in Portugal, unlike other countries whose culture is fear of lawsuits and leads them to strictly comply with the recommendations of health organizations, in Portugal doctors stab him, as they do in those of the General Directorate of Health in the It is about therapy (…) and they do medicine as it should be done and perhaps this is one of the factors of our success ”.
