Portugal Situation Report, Wednesday 24th March 2021.
Introduction
Yesterday, as expected, was a very busy day with a plethora of updates during and after the Infarmed meeting.
These are presentations given by the various experts who are the key players in advising government officials, primarily the President, Prime Minister and others on the development of Covid-19 and providing various forecasts. It is based on these meetings held currently every two weeks, and discussions with political parties, that the President determines the need for the State of Emergency and if so, sets the framework for its further extension. Thereafter, the Council of Ministers determines the detailed measures needed in response to the situation, to be included in the decree law.
As we have done before, we provided a live update through our Facebook page linked to our website, of the summary of these presentations. I would describe this as a “one stop shop” of the current situation. To read beyond the headlines, this 5 minute read, provides all the information you need to know about the current situation and the forecasts from the experts concerned.
If you were unable to read it yesterday then you can view it here.
In other words to be “informed” stay tuned to “Infarmed”.
Following the Infarmed meeting, the Prime Minister António Costa stated “What I can say is that this is the Government’s understanding. At least until the end of this [de-confinement] process, it is necessary to maintain a State of Emergency to ensure that all steps are taken safely”. This appears to set the framework for the future at least until May when we reach the last phase.
We see an increasing number of comments recently of more movements on the streets. This of course is a result of the implementation of the various stages of de-confinement. The first of these was 15th March. What is important however is that such movements are proportionate to these changes. If this is excessive and this results in increases in cases, then the risks will increase as will the new cases. At this critical stage we must all continue to follow the measures in place.
Concerning vaccinations, there were various reports yesterday during the Infarmed meeting, of the progress so far. From the information provided, despite the constraints imposed by the reduced supply from AstaZeneca, Portugal is ahead of the average in Europe and is on-track to achieve the 70% vaccination of the population in summer. There is little point in comparing this say with the situation in the UK, as such comparisons are hardly productive. We live in Portugal and therefore subject to the overall supply to and within Europe.
There are more vaccines being developed and this can only improve the availability within Europe and other European countries. If we have to wait a two or three months longerr, then this is not the end of the world in the context. The pandemic only started 15 months ago and the fact that vaccines have been developed and that 461 million doses have already been administered in around 135 countries, is unprecedented in this time span! Our expectations are naturally high but this has to be tempered with patience in this time of crisis! We look to the vaccine suppliers to meet their contractual obligations in providing the vaccines as scheduled.
Turning to news last evening that teachers and non-teaching staff from pre-school, 1st cycle of basic education will receive an SMS, on Wednesday, to schedule the vaccination for Covid-19, advances the Ministry of Education.
The office of Minister Tiago Brandão Rodrigues says that teachers and non-teachers will have to reply to the cell phone message to confirm the vaccine, by Thursday, March 25th.
“The SMS schedule contains the location and time of the appointment” and will be sent “next Wednesday, March 24th, to which an answer must be given (yes / no), necessarily by Thursday, March 25”, the statement said.
This, as you can see, is important and time critical information with a very tight deadline. Time critical announcements in crisis situations is part of our remit at Safe Communities Portugal, so it is important that this is published and shared in an unambiguous way.
In doing this through social media, it is important that lines are kept clear and such key messages do not become distorted by comments and views unrelated to the topic. This would be the same if we were disseminating information in the case of a major rural fire or during any other catastrophe. The principals are the same, key officially sourced information and advice to reach as many people as possible.
As such, we take what some may considered a disciplined approach, by removing comments that do not subscribe to our standards which we have clearly outlined in the “About Us” section on our Facebook page. These set out the basic rules as to the use of our page, similar to various Facebook groups. This is important, as during this health crisis there is considerable misinformation in circulation using Facebook to spread various personal agendas. In the interests of the vast majority of our readers therefore we have to ensure there are appropriate safeguards in place. We thank you for your understanding.
Have a Safe Day.
Headlines.
The Prime Minister warns that the risk of transmission of Covid-19 is increasing in Portugal.
After taking part in yet another meeting on the evolution of the epidemiological situation, at Infarmed, in Lisbon, António Costa turned to the social network Twitter to underline that, although the country maintains a “stable” epidemiological situation, it is very important “to keep all precautions and apply preventive measures “. For the Prime Minister, the data he has received shows that “we are on the right track”. Things are going well,” said the Prime Minister during a visit to Liceu Camões, in Lisbon.
However, Costa wanted to warn of the fact that everything could change: “We have to go testing and measuring. Things don’t go well by chance. They only work if we maintain discipline,” he said.
The Prime Minister does not want to “ruin everything we have achieved” because “we are experiencing a dramatic month of January and February”. “Now that we have managed to conquer this situation, we must be able to keep it that way,” he said, referring to what happens in other countries “where” there was no capacity to control “the pandemic.
Covid-19
DGS Covid report published yesterday once again showed a downward trend in all key areas as follows:
Confirmed Cases: 818,212 (+ 434 / + 0.05 %)
Number of admitted: 743 (-28 / -3.8 %)
Number of ICU admitted: 159 (-6 /-3.6 %)
Deaths: 16.794 (+ 10 / + 0.05 %)
Recovered: 769,086 (+ 1212 / + 0.15 %)
Active cases: 32,332 (-788 / – 2.3%)
Safe Communities comparisons/trends: show that Deaths 3rd lowest since 10th October; new cases – below last week’s daily average and one of lowest since 1st September; Recoveries nearly 3 times new cases; In hospital lowest since 6th October and 6033 less compared to number in hospital 1st Feb and lowest in ICU since 18th October 2020 – decreased by 81.6% since 1st February. Also active cases were the lowest since 12th October and a decrease of 149,291 since 31st October; those under surveillance lowest since August 2020 and there were no deaths in Algarve
Health
Remarks by Minister of Health following Infarmed meeting.
The Minister of Health, Marta Temido, stressed the need to “continue to fight the virus without relieving the precautionary measures” so that Portugal can continue its positive trajectory in the face of the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the press conference after yet another presentation session on the epidemiological situation in Portugal, the Minister stressed the need to “maintain high attention and special caution regarding the approach to the next few days and weeks”.
Marta Temido also underlined the reinforcement of the testing strategy, which has included screenings on the return to school activities and other activities on the verge of resumption, and the evolution of vaccination. “It is worth underlining that we estimate that at the end of this week we will reach the goal we set for inoculation of at least 80% of people over 80 years of age, also estimating that we have more than one million Portuguese people vaccinated with an inoculation and about half a million Portuguese already with the complete vaccination process”.
The Minister of Health also affirmed that the beginning of the de-confinement process increased mobility and reduced teleworking and reiterated the call for the adoption of preventive measures, keeping teleworking whenever possible, restricting social contacts to what is essential and ensuring basic public health precautions.
Marta Temido referred that the epidemiological situation is stable, “with a decreasing trend in the number of new cases, hospitalisations and mortality”, and added that the current epidemiological risk “has an incidence in a level between 60 and 120 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants over the last 14 days and, in terms of effective risk of transmission, it is now at a risk of 0.88 for the mainland.
The Minister also warned of the European context, since most countries have “a major incidence and effective transmission risks are also considered high”. Marta Temido stated that this is an “adverse and worrying” context.
Highlights from yesterday’s Infarmed meeting.
From yesterday’s meeting these are the main points that were made by the experts:
The R (t) has been rising since February, but so is the incidence of cases, although it will probably stabilize at 60 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants within 14 days. Baltazar Nunes, from the Ricardo Jorge Institute (INSA) says that it is necessary to look at these numbers together, to analyze the Risk Matrix;
The active population has the highest incidence of cases, especially in the 20-30 age group;
André Peralta Santos, from DGS, indicated that the population aged 40-60, “to be completely safe”, should be included in vaccination;
Portugal has a 70% prevalence of cases related to the United Kingdom variant. The most recent data, not yet fully accounted for, however, points to a level already above 80%;
These figures are in line with the other European countries, but, underlined expert João Paulo Gomes, it is important to control flights and entries in Portugal in order to continue to evaluate and control the cases and variants that enter the national territory;
The lethality rate of Covid-19 is 2%, that is, in every 100 cases, there are two that are fatal.
Despite the delays related to Astrazeneca, Portugal maintains its intention to reach 70% of those vaccinated during the summer, and it is still possible, according to Henrique Gouveia e Melo, to achieve this number at the beginning of the summer season;
This week Portugal should reach the number of 1 million vaccinated with the first dose and 500 thousand vaccinated with the two inoculations;
In April, “about 1.8 million vaccines” will arrive in Portugal.
Vaccinations
Vaccination of 280 thousand teachers and staff starts this Saturday.
Over the next weekend, around 80 thousand teachers and staff in public and private kindergartens and elementary schools will be vaccinated against the Covid-19, including full-time school activities. The professionals of the other levels of education should be called throughout April as the de-confinement process advances and the opening of more schools, confirms the Ministry of Education in a statement sent to newsrooms, realizing that educational establishments are already receiving information about the process.
On the same note, it is reported that the AstraZeneca vaccine was chosen to protect this professional group that only recently entered phase 1 of the vaccination plan, becoming part of the priority groups. Portugal currently has over 200 thousand doses of this vaccine in stock, ready to be used.
The “safety and efficacy” of this product was again confirmed by the European Medicines Agency last week, after some episodes of adverse reactions were investigated.
Altogether, and according to the figures presented by the co-ordinator of the task force at the meeting at Infarmed held on Tuesday morning, this first group of 80 thousand professionals corresponds to 28% of a population of about 281 teachers and non-teachers that will be vaccinated in the coming weekends.
Covid-19 Variants.
João Paulo Gomes, from the Ricardo Jorge Institute, stated yesterday at the Infarmed meeting that almost 100% of Covid cases in England are from the United Kingdom variant and this should be the trend in the rest of the countries, being just “a matter of time”. “The UK variant is expected to be in more than 80% of cases in our country.” “Almost all countries are expected to have a near 100% prevalence of the UK variant.” In Portugal, we have a prevalence of 
70%, although, says the specialist, it is expected to reach 80% of cases shortly.
João Paulo Gomes also explained that the rapid tests will not allow the search for new variants. Mass testing is positive, but it has this problem, says the expert. To solve it, he proposes to increase the sampling of PCR tests, which are the ones that allow the analysis and surveillance of variants, by increasing the network of laboratories – private and the public sector.
There are 24 cases of the South African variant identified in Portugal (250 in the United Kingdom, 300 in Belgium). João Paulo Gomes stresses the importance of flight control and travel history, as this variant is spread across European countries that have many flight connections with Portugal. “The last thing you want is for the same thing to happen to the UK variant, which is widespread.”
Movement increase.
“Bad behaviour” grows slightly. Use of mask falls, mobility increases.
Yesterday during the Infarmed meeting it was announced that there had been an improvement in the behaviour of the population since September in relation to measures to combat the pandemic.
However, in the last two or three weeks there has been a “slight increase in worse behaviour”.
The Portuguese consider that washing hands, for example, is an easy measure to adopt, the same is no longer happening with two meters distancing and visits to friends or family.
The use of a mask outside the home and with other people decreased slightly, from 91% who always wore in February to 86% by March 19th.
Portuguese mobility is also growing. The frequency with which people left home in the last month other than to go to work went from 17% to 26.4% in a month. In the distance of 2 meters, it went from 8.9% to 12.2%. In relation to being with ten or more people, the percentage is now 4.9%, when a month earlier it was no more than 1.8%.
Facebook deleted more than 1.3 billion fake accounts at the end of 2020.
Facebook announced on Monday that it had deleted more than 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December 2020. 12 million fake contents about Covid-19 and vaccination against the disease have also been removed, in an effort to contain the spread of false information.
According to the social network managed by Mark Zuckerberg, there is a team of 35,000 people working to find and remove false information on the platform, in addition to artificial intelligence software that detects fake content.
In a statement published in the “Newsroom” area of Facebook, the social network also revealed that it removed more than 100 networks of “co-ordinated false behaviour”.
In addition to the team of thousands of people who identify fake content, Facebook said it has built “a global network of more than 80 independent fact-checkers, who review content in more than 60 languages.”
On the Covid-19 pandemic, a topic that has been exploited to the fullest by conspiracy theories and fake content networks, Facebook said that the 12 million pieces removed are the result of “using artificial intelligence systems to bring down materials related to Covid-19 that international health experts have flagged as misinformation, and from there detect copies when someone tries to share them”.
The company also responded to criticisms that the social network does not act quickly enough to respond to the spread of disinformation, guaranteeing that it has “all motivation to keep false information out of our applications and we have taken several steps in this direction, to the detriment of growth in the number of users”.
Almost 90% of Portuguese want to be vaccinated.
According to a survey carried out by ISAG, more than a third of the Portuguese say they do not have preference over the brand of the vaccine, but the one that conveys more confidence is clearly that of Pfizer.
Almost 90% of Portuguese (87.2%, strictly speaking) want to be vaccinated, reveals a study by ISAG – European Business School and the Centre for Research in Business and Tourism Sciences, from the Consuelo Vieira da Costa Foundation.
Victor Tavares, one of those responsible for the study, explains to Jornal de Notícias that it is “evident that there is a feeling and confidence regarding the vaccine, regardless of the brand selected”.
The survey analysed the preferred brand and 37% of the population replied that they had no position. However, 34.9% would opt for the Pfizer immunizer, far ahead of the 8.7% who would select AstraZeneca and the 5.6% who would choose Moderna.
Despite these trends, the majority of Portuguese people show confidence in any of the options: the Pfizer vaccine is “approved” by 68.2% of people, that of AstraZeneca by 60.3% and that of Moderna by 60.1%. The study predates the temporary suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Portugal.
The questionnaire included 1057 participants, of whom 3.7% have already been inoculated, 18.4% have been infected and 15% have lost someone close to the Covid-19.
Government plans to accommodate 1100 homeless people by the end of 2021.
The Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, Ana Mendes Godinho, said that the Government aims to accommodate 1100 homeless people by the end of 2021.
In Coimbra, in the signing of five protocols with institutions from Coimbra and Figueira da Foz in the context of Housing First and Shared Apartments solutions, the Minister stressed that the protocols signed so far have already covered about 300 people.
“We want to have integrated responses that respond to the various dimensions of the need for intervention: accommodation, psychological support, qualifications and retraining. Integrated interventions that include teams that accompany people who go to these Housing First or Shared Apartments solutions in a logic of reintegration” she said.
Ana Mendes Godinho said that “the critical question is to guarantee housing and accommodation first”, hence the creation of these two responses, under the National Strategy for the Integration of People in Homeless Situations (ENIPSSA).
The Minister stated that a platform is being prepared with the capacity to guarantee “a reading at national level of all the people being monitored and to identify the necessary measures for each person, in this concern for personalized and individualized responses”.
The Government is also finalizing the ordinance that regulates the National Emergency Accommodation Exchange, which will allow to have “a central base for the management of vacancies at national level for emergency situations, having here also the integration of public properties that can be used for this purpose of urgent social responses ».
Real Estate market.
Prices in the real estate market showed some recovery at the end of last year, with the Housing Price Index growing 1.5 percentage points to 8.6% in the last quarter of the year, the INE revealed this Tuesday.
In a year marked by the pandemic, the Housing Price Index (IPHab) increased 8.4%, 1.2 percentage points less (pp) than in 2019, according to data released this Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). The average annual increase in the prices of existing housing (8.7%) exceeded that of new housing (7.4%).
The statistics office also revealed that in the 4th quarter of 2020, the annual rate of change of the IPHab was 8.6%, 1.5 percentage points more than in the previous quarter. In this period, prices for existing homes increased at a slower rate than for new homes, 8.5% and 9.0%, respectively.
Other News
National Defence creates Harassment Prevention Unit.
This Monday, by order of the Minister of National Defence, a Monitoring and Follow-up Team – the National Defence Harassment Prevention Unit – was set up with the mission of monitoring and following up any complaints 
related to conduct likely to substantiate harassment, violence sexual or discrimination, when practiced by military, militarized and civilians who exercise functions in the National Defence.
This Unit will be located in the General Secretariat of the Ministry of National Defence, directly dependent on the tutelage.
With the creation of this Unit, it is intended to reinforce the responsibility of all the military, militarized and civilians who exercise functions in the National Defence, with regard to their conduct, in strict compliance with the principles of rigour and transparency, legality, equality and non-discrimination, in order to generate and maintain the credibility and prestige of the institution they represent.
This measure has already been implemented in several European countries and allies, of which Germany, Canada, Spain, the United States, France and the Netherlands stand out, and its main objectives are to improve the dissemination of existing communication channels, sensitise National Defence people to the theme, through training sessions; and to monitor the development of processes, allowing information to be obtained in a centralized manner, while ensuring that disciplinary competence and the responsibility for initiating the respective disciplinary processes remain with the entities provided for by law.