Temperatures are dropping and concerns are mounting about what will happen to the pandemic. Here are some of the answers to the questions that the first covid-19 winter may ask:

  1. What influence do colder seasons have on the transmission of viral diseases?
    Fall and winter increase virus transmission, as observed annually in the seasonal flu season, which runs from November to March and peaks between December and February. Cold weather provides ideal conditions for virus particles to travel through the air. The human body also has reduced defense mechanisms, such as mucous membranes, which dry out and allow harmful particles to pass more easily.
  2. What greater risk can the fall / winter season represent in the covid-19 pandemic?
    The new coronavirus will “compete” in the coming months with the seasonal flu. This is usually a time when the demand for emergencies increases due to the flu, other respiratory problems or cardiovascular diseases. Added to this is the probability of an increase in covid-19 cases, enhanced by the cold and the tendency that people will have to concentrate indoors and without natural ventilation, ideal conditions for infections. As the director of Atlantic Health, Johns Hopkins, Tom Inglesby, told Atlantic magazine last July: “As the cold increases, activities and people will begin to retreat inland, which unfortunately increases the risk of transmission and the risk of super outbreaks ”. Another challenge is the ability to perform rigorous diagnoses, since citizens19 and the flu have some symptoms in common, such as shortness of breath, cough, or fever.
  3. Can the response to the pandemic decrease the intensity of seasonal flu?
    Recommended individual measures and behaviors to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus (physical distance, wearing a mask indoors, frequent hand washing, and respiratory etiquette) influence the transmission of influenza. This was seen during this year’s seasonal flu season in the southern hemisphere, which had little expression in the months between April and September in countries such as Australia, Argentina or South Africa, although there were covid-19 peaks that coincided with warmer days. low.
  4. How did the health authorities prepare for the fall / winter?
    Regardless of the success in containing the contagion of covid-19, with Portugal behind Spain, Italy or France in number of cases and deaths per million inhabitants, the negative impact of the pandemic on the National Health Service (SNS) is reflected in more than a million unanswered queries, almost a quarter of surgeries were postponed and it was recognized that cancer treatments and diagnoses were affected, among other negative impacts of the paralysis of extra-covid health services, whose real consequences they are immeasurable.
    Catching up is one of the priorities of the autumn / winter plan announced by the Ministry of Health, in which the need for a ‘provision of medical care’ does not covid19, whether scheduled or urgent ”ranks third, after concerns about“ higher incidence ”of the disease and increased demand for services caused by seasonal flu and other respiratory infections.
    Regarding the capacity of the SNS to cope with the demand, that is, of respiratory diseases, the number of ventilators went from about 1,100 to 1,800. In the Intensive Care sector, the goal is to reach an average of 9.4 beds per 100,000 inhabitants by the end of the year. Since March, almost 5,000 professionals have been recruited into the NHS, including doctors, nurses and technicians.
    Define However, a strategy for conducting tests that rapidly separate patients with COVID-19-19 of the other patients. Not flat settle also the strengthening of stocks of drugs, medical devices, protective equipment and tests in health units, as well as the creation of reserves of these materials.
  5. How does the Government propose to look beyond covid-19?
    It is defined that the surveillance of chronic patients, vision cancer screening, maternal and child health, vaccination, family planning and oral health are essential activities that must continue for ten million citizens, in the midst of a pandemic that in six months it reached about 72,000 people, 2.7 percent of whom died.
    One of the novelties is that a non-civic response “mission team” is created in the health services organization.19, with elements from each regional health administration, which should focus on everything that goes beyond COVID-19-19. Your commitment should be to create contingency plans to resume and maintain the scheduled activity that was dismantled with the pandemic.
    The plan also foresees that there will be hospital units19 free“Where the cases of contagion with the new coronavirus.
    To cope with seasonal flu, the NHS vaccination plan was also anticipated and expanded. Vaccinations begin on September 28 for the highest priority population groups: nursing home residents, health professionals, social workers and, for the first time this year, pregnant women. As of October 15, the second phase of vaccines begins, aimed at people 65 years of age and over and with chronic diseases.